Climate-smart Agriculture
Completed
Scale-up
South Africa , Zambia,
Africa GreenCo is a creditworthy renewable energy buyer and seller that reduces energy prices and expands renewable energy supply across southern Africa.
P4G provided this partnership with two rounds of catalytic grant funding – US $600,000 in 2018 and US $1,000,000 in 2019.
In 2021, Africa GreenCo secured regulatory approval in Zambia and began operations with a 25MW solar photovoltaic pilot project. At a high level, this achievement underscores the potential success and transformation achieved by multistakeholder partnerships for green growth. On the ground level, it increases energy investment through the private sector to help mitigate climate change, improve security of supply and enhance efficiency in the power sector.
P4G accelerated Africa GreenCo through on-going strategic advice, engaging institutional investors to capitalize the business model, and mobilizing its ecosystem to engage with policymakers in Zambia to approve their model. This approach of unlocking investments for impact led to an initial investment of US $1.5 million from Denmark’s Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU) and PIDG’s InfraCo Africa to operationalize the GreenCo business model.
In May 2022, GreenCo announced it raised US $15.5 million in financing to develop an initial portfolio of up to 110 MW of renewable energy and scale its innovative offering as Zambia’s first renewable energy buyer and services provider. GreenCo, which was admitted to the Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP) in 2021, is actively expanding to other African countries and aims to support three gigawatts of new renewable energy generation capacity and mobilize US $5.6 billion of renewable energy investment by 2030.
You can read a full case study on the partnership here.
P4G’s support, both financial and strategic, has been pivotal in GreenCo’s ability to progress and attract investment. This has included timely direct engagement with political leaders and investment partners to reinforce GreenCo’s vision and stimulate action. P4G provides a rare and invaluable bridge between concept development and commercialisation – such support is essential for innovative, ambitious, scalable, SGD-aligned business models to fulfil their potential.