Africa’s contemporary solar energy expansion should be situated within the long history of colonial and postcolonial electrification. Far from representing a clean break from the past, solar power capitalism reproduces entrenched patterns of inequality embedded in earlier energy infrastructures. Drawing on the concepts of insertion and depletion, the chapter identifies three enduring design logics: enclave privilege, where electricity serves industrial and settler enclaves; externalization of risk, where social and ecological costs are displaced onto local communities; and concessional underwriting, through which financial aid and loans entrench external managerial control. Using cases from Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Cameroon, the chapter shows how colonial grids, hydroelectric projects, and postcolonial hydroelectric dam schemes institutionalized dependency and exclusion. It concludes that these infrastructures materialized hierarchies of power and scarcity whose design principles continue to shape Africa’s energy futures under the guise of green development.