Solar energy markets were deliberately engineered rather than arising naturally from technological progress. By examining their evolution from the 1970s oil crises to today’s off-grid solar boom in Africa, the chapter shows how crises, policy design, and development finance converted solar power into a financial asset class. It argues that solar power capitalism operates through insertion and depletion: the incorporation of African states, households, and resources into green value chains and their simultaneous exhaustion through dependency and austerity. Drawing on Polanyi’s concept of market engineering and dependency theory, the chapter explores how multilateral financial institutions, philanthropists, celebrities, and Chinese investors structured Africa’s solar energy expansion. African governments, while exercising bounded agency, operate within externally imposed frameworks that reproduce structural subordination. The solar energy boom reconfigures rather than resolves dependence, embedding Africa more deeply into global circuits of green accumulation.