Africa GreenCo Awarded $600,000 to Expand Renewable Energy in sub-Saharan Africa through an Innovative New Business Model

About

10/20/18

Contacts:

P4G: Frank Walter, frank.walter@p4gpartnerships.org, 01-202-271-7727

Africa GreenCo: Ana Hajduka, ana.hajduka@africagreenco.com

AFRICA GREENCO AWARDED $US600,000 TO EXPAND RENEWABLE ENERGY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA THROUGH AN INNOVATIVE NEW BUSINESS MODEL

COPENHAGEN—20 October—There are more than 600 million people without any energy access in sub-Sahara Africa. At the Copenhagen P4G Summit, Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 (P4G) awarded US$ 600,000 to Africa GreenCo for its innovative plans to accelerate the supply and demand of renewable energy in southern Africa.

“No region of the world has a higher concentration of people living in deep poverty than sub-Saharan Africa,” said P4G Global Director Ian de Cruz. “Africa GreenCo has the potential to play a transformative role in improving energy access for millions of people in this region, which will enhance education, health care and stimulate economic development.”  

Africa GreenCo is a public-private-partnership between African governments, the private sector and international financial institutions to create a dynamic new participant in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP). Africa GreenCo will be a regional renewable energy creditworthy intermediary offtaker and power services provider, reducing the credit risk and therefore cost of renewable energy generation projects. Africa GreenCo is working closely with the Government of Zambia and its development partners (in particular the Agence Française de Développement, the European Commission, the African Development Bank and the Development Bank of Southern Africa) and its initial focus will be on supporting projects in Zambia prior to expanding into other SAPP member countries.

“This P4G support adds valuable momentum to Africa GreenCo as we move closer to securing the investments and agreements necessary to launch and operationalize in Zambia,” said Ana Hajduka, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Africa GreenCo.

Africa GreenCo is one of six partnerships selected by P4G to receive scale-up funding and among 24 partnerships P4G is funding and/or facilitating in 2018 following a global competition that attracted 450 submissions from 80 countries.

Africa GreenCo’s transformative role is to mobilise significant private sector investment for the sector, to strengthen national and the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) power markets and shift away from the current model of African governments taking on heavy liabilities for individual energy projects. Throughout Africa raw power resources are abundant but distributed unevenly – when hydropower is plentiful in one country there may be a drought in another. The region is also ripe for solar and wind energy development. Yet the lack of credit-worthy purchasers of power deters private sector investment as well as trade across the region.

Long term, Africa GreenCo hopes to mobilize US$2 billion in private investments to stimulate development of 2,500 MW of new renewable energy projects across the SADC region, which would create an estimated 645,000 direct and indirect jobs and avoid nearly 200 million tons of carbon emissions equivalent.

"Energy access plays a central role in nearly every major challenge and opportunity the world faces today--yet sub-Saharan Africa is suffering from a sustained and chronic energy crisis,” says Saadia Madsbjerg, Managing Director at The Rockefeller Foundation, which has been supporting Africa GreenCo since 2015. “By mitigating credit risk and catalyzing private sector investment, Africa GreenCo will make renewable energy development economically viable and more affordable.”

To date, The Rockefeller Foundation has provided significant grant funding for the development of the model through its Zero Gap Innovative Finance portfolio, which provides grants for the early stage design and testing of solutions that mobilize private sector investment towards social, environmental or economic challenges. Africa GreenCo is also supported by Convergence, an organization that supports blended public-private finance investment.

About P4G

P4G – Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 – is a new initiative with the ambition of becoming the world’s leading forum for developing concrete public-private partnerships at scale to deliver on the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. The government of Denmark is providing initial funding for P4G from 2018-2022. P4G partner countries include: Chile, Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Korea and Vietnam. P4G partner organizations include: the Global Green Growth Institute, C40 Cities, World Economic Forum, and the World Resources Institute (which hosts the P4G Global Hub).