The Green Climate Fund (GCF), a United Nations entity that aids developing nations in adapting to or reducing climate change, has provided $150 million to the African Development Bank (AfDB). The funds will be used to support AfDB’s Desert to Power initiative, which intends to create 10 GW of solar PV capacity across various nations in Africa’s Sahel area, delivering grid-connected electricity to 160 million people and off-grid power to another 90 million.
The Sahel is a semi-arid region that runs from north to south, dividing the Sahara Desert from the Savanna. While the AfDB programme helps all 11 nations in the region, the GCF will focus its investment on projects in the G5 Sahel, a French-led partnership involving Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. The project is expected to raise nearly $1 billion over the course of seven years, with projects divided into three categories: grid upgrades and storage to allow for solar energy adoption; financing for independent power producers to build new solar plants; and technical assistance to help create stable investment environments.
Earlier this month, the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) launched the Africa Wind Power Initiative (AWP) with the aim of accelerating the development of wind energy in Africa. The association that promotes the development of wind energy proposes to act as a facilitator between African governments and wind energy investors or producers through this project. The organisation would take action at the regulatory level in particular.
REGlobal’s Views: Africa has huge untapped solar power resource and initiatives like this can immensely help the region in improving energy access through generating cheaper, reliable, and clean solar power. Further, such initiatives can help attract greater private investments in the region’s clean energy space.
