A $90 billion electricity fund, supported by the World Bank and the African Development Bank, is expected to benefit Nigeria and other African nations.
According to a Bloomberg story, the fund is a component of the global financial institution’s ambition to supply electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2023.
On Friday, a new center for technical support was opened by prominent climate organizations, such as Sustainable Energy For All, Global Alliance for People and Planet, and Rockefeller Foundation.
As a component of the Mission 300 program, this effort evaluates and assists projects in meeting program requirements in order to help them obtain funding.
Through the Nigeria Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES project), Nigeria—a crucial component of Mission 300—will likewise reap significant benefits from the initiative.
The World Bank estimates that the project will replace more than 250,000 costly and environmentally harmful diesel generators while benefiting over 17.5 million Nigerians, or 20% of the nation’s present underprivileged population.
Several Funding Sources for the Project
Consequently, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) was established in 2021 by the Rockefeller Foundation in collaboration with the Bezos Earth Fund and the Ikea Foundation.
Together, they are contributing $10 million in the first round to 15 sustainable energy projects in 11 African nations, including Burkina Faso and Mozambique, through the World Bank.
According to a joint statement from the organizations, this effort intends to improve clean-energy solutions, with an emphasis on technology such as mini-grids.
Over the past 15 years, we have, quite plainly, witnessed a stasis in the number of Africans receiving electricity. According to Ashvin Dayal, chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation’s power and climate program, this is the continent’s most important climate and development challenge for the next 20 years, he told Bloomberg TV.
According to GEAPP, the fund’s objective is to launch a significant advocacy and fund-raising campaign to spur action and gather the necessary resources to assist in obtaining a portion of the monies.
“We must ensure that the projects we develop are bankable and generate significant, financially solid returns.
Woochong Um, the CEO of GEAPP, declared, “We will launch a massive fund-raising and advocacy effort to elevate action and mobilize the resources required.”
The goal is to distribute the required $90 billion in funding equally among public monies, commercial commitments, and charitable and concessional financing.
Potential sources include the Resilience and Sustainability Trust of the International Monetary Fund and redirected special drawing rights, which are reserve assets that the IMF issues to its members.
Through the program, nations will be incentivized to enhance their financing availability by pledging to implement measures that promote the use of renewable energy.
Things to be aware about
According to information from the Debt Management Office’s (DMO) foreign debt stock report, as of March 31, 2024, Nigeria owed the World Bank a total of $15.59 billion.
Additionally, this year, the World Bank might approve four credit projects for Nigeria totaling $2 billion.
In the meantime, no money has yet been released from the $750 million allocated to the Nigeria Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up Project, which was approved on December 14, 2023.
With an ambitious objective of improving access to electricity for over 17.5 million Nigerians using distributed renewable energy solutions, this initiative is essential for resolving the country’s electricity access deficit.
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