Nigeria, UN Agency Target $500m in Distributed Renewable Energy Fund
CHIGOZIE AMADI
Nigeria and a United Nations-backed agency, Sustainable Energy For All organisation, known as SEforALL, have set a $500 million target for a fund to finance the roll out of so-called distributed renewable energy, such as solar home systems and mini-grids.
The fund backed by the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) will be managed by Africa50, an infrastructure investor established by the African Development Bank (AfDB), Bloomberg reported yesterday.
Nigerian pension funds will also invest, according to Damilola Ogunbiyi, SEforALL’s Chief Executive Officer.
The aim is to put together a “fund that would be accessible and will be in local currency for local developers,” she said in an interview in Cape Town on the sidelines of a global gathering of development finance institutions.
The fund is linked to the Mission 300 programme led by the World Bank and the AfDB to provide electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030. The initiative will provide tens of billions of dollars to countries that meet certain conditions including reforming power utilities and adapting regulations to encourage private investment, it said.
Africa50’s CEO, Alain Ebobisse, said in an interview in January that the fund was being planned, but the size had yet to be decided.
Separately, Africa50 is setting up a $200 million fund to be known as the Africa Solar Facility, to invest in distributed renewable energy projects across the continent and sponsored by the International Solar Alliance.
Mini-grids and solar home systems are seen as a way of getting electricity to settlements and rural areas far away from national grids. More than 80 per cent of the people in the world without access to electricity, or 570 million people, live in sub-Saharan Africa, and 86 million of them are in Nigeria.
