Energise Africa Final

About

NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Frank Walter, Head of Communications, P4G | frank.walter@p4gpartnerships.org 

OXFORD—17 July 2019— More than 600 million people living in Africa lack access to electricity – a statistic that has become somewhat of a refrain in global development spheres.

Energise Africa, a 2018 P4G start-up partnership, is steadily working to decrease that number by offering innovative financing and investing models to supply renewable energy to diverse communities across Uganda, Mali, Kenya, DRC, Mozambique, Tanzania, Senegal, Rwanda, Cameroon and Burkina Faso.

A joint venture of Ethex and Lendahand, two of Europe’s leading online impact investing platforms, the partnership connects with every-day people to provide affordable finance for pioneering solar businesses to accelerate universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all, whilst targeting returns of around 6%. With investments starting at £50, Energise Africa offers every-day investors an affordable, low-risk option that also appeals to the global, growing interest in connecting one’s money to one’s values.

Following the close of their contract with P4G, the partnership has grown its registered base of investors more than 50%, from just over 1,110 participants at the start of the contract period to more than 1,800 today. Actual investors also grew by more than 291 individuals to almost 1,100 over the courses of the funding period. This growth of involved ‘every-day people’ enable the partnership to raise USD 11.5 million in cumulative investments via the platform, the effects of which are threefold: helping 358,000 people access solar energy, mitigating CO2 emissions by 78,000 tons a year and successfully repaying USD 3.5 million to investors. P4G start-up funding also contributed to digital marketing for the Energise Africa initiative, ultimately translating into increased action taken by users and viewers of Energise Africa platforms and materials.

Looking forward, Energise Africa will continue working to provide its community of investors with more protection around their investments. In approaching this task, they have pioneered their first investor guarantee in the United Kingdom, “protecting the capital invested by first time investors up to  £100” to encourage people to get started on impact investing with subsidized risk.  

About P4G

P4G – Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 – is currently funding and facilitating 24 public-private partnerships. These include projects to accelerate the adoption of electric buses in Latin America, expand the supply of renewable energy in Sub-Sahara Africa, reduce food loss and waste in Indonesia and reduce plastic and packaging waste from e-commerce in China. P4G is a collaborative partnership among nine partner countries: Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea and Vietnam.  In addition, C40, World Economic Forum, Global Green Growth Institute, IFC and World Resources Institute, which hosts P4G’s global hub, are partner organizations to P4G.