Socioeconomic and climate uncertainty shape solar electricity costs and storage needs across West Africa

West Africa faces electricity deficits, yet solar deployment remains hindered by insufficient spatial economic planning and uncertainty in climate conditions. We develop a cost-disaggregated framework to evaluate utility-scale solar power and off-grid solar systems with battery and hydrogen storage across 184 districts in the West African Power Pool under 13 climate scenarios. Here we show that baseline solar electricity costs range from 0.100 to 0.409 US dollars per kilowatt-hour, with Liberia and Sierra Leone most vulnerable to uncertainty in solar resources, whereas Senegal and The Gambia show greater investment resilience. Multi-objective optimized storage configurations vary geographically, reflecting trade-offs among system cost, supply adequacy and renewable-energy utilization. Some districts favor battery-intensive systems, whereas others favor larger hydrogen capacities. Relative to solar-only systems, the selected configurations reduce loss of power supply probability in all districts and potential energy waste probability in 74% of districts. These results support climate-aware electrification planning in data-scarce regions. Solar costs vary widely across West Africa, with climate uncertainty shaping regional viability and optimized storage improving reliability; according to techno-economic modeling and optimization across 184 districts and 13 climate scenarios.