Monday, December 11, 2023
Kenya’s Lake Turkana Wind Power project opened in July is generates 300 MW of wind power. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS
where close to half of its 1.2 billion people have access to electricity, is set to become a world leader in renewable energy. As global business and development leaders met in Johannesburg, South Africa, to attend the Africa Investment Forum (AIF), held Nov. 11 to 13, one of the key focuses of the deals being discussed was around sustainable, renewable energy.
- Africa,Organised by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and its various partners, the forum is expected to see $67 billion in deals closed over the next few days.
In attendance where heads of state from South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda and Mozambique. At an invitation-only discussion among the leaders, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said there was a lot of progress in Africa as a whole.
“I have always thought it was Africa’s time. We African’s have let ourselves down, we are now realising it has always been our time. And we are now seize every opportunity and be where we should be by now,” Kagame said.
Alain Ebobisse, CEO of Africa 50, the Pan-African infrastructure investment platform capitalised by the AfDB, said that there was a consensus from African leaders that they needed to do whatever they could to attract more private investment. He said that the AIF attendance showed that there was a changing narrative for investment on the continent.
Ebobisse said that a lot was already happening on the continent and while the media focused on the challenges there were huge success stories too — like the 1.5 GW Benban Solar Park in Egypt, which is the world’s largest solar photovoltaic plant.
“I’m sure that people are not talking enough about this major achievement which is the Benban Solar Programmer, 1.5 GW of solar that was invested mostly by the private sector in a record time,” he said.
Ebobisse went on to highlight Kenya’s opening this July of the Lake Turkana Wind Power project, which at a generation capacity of 300 MW makes it the largest wind power project on the continent.
“It was funded by the private sector,” Ebobisse told the media. He also looked towards Senegal which was implementing many independent power producers or IPPs in the solar sector.
“So there is a lot that is happening. We need to also widely understand the challenges and understand what is happening on the ground. And people are actually making good money in this investment. And there is nothing wrong about that. Let’s celebrate those successes,” he said.
African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said today the bank had doubled its investment in climate finance from $12 billion to $25 billion by 2020. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS
A few weeks ago, the Governors of the AfDB met in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan, approving a historic $115 billion increase to the bank’s authorised capital base to $208 billion. “This is the highest capital increase in the history of the bank since its establishment in 1964,” AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina said today.
During the October announcement Adesina had said that a significant portion of funding would be invested in climate change.
Today, in response to a question from IPS, Adesina further explained that the bank had doubled its investment in climate finance from $12 billion to $25 billion by 2020.
“Almost 50 percent of our finance will be going to climate adaptation as opposed to climate mitigation. So we are the first multilateral development bank to actually reach that balance in terms of adaptation and mitigation,” he said.
“I believe that coal is the past. I believe that renewable energy is the future and we as a bank are investing in not in the past, but in the future in making sure that we are investing in solar energy, in hydro energy, in wind, all types of renewable energy that Africa needs,” Adesina said.
“We want Africa to lead in renewable energy.”
He said one of the projects was the AfDB’s Green Baseload Facility, which according to the bank, aims “to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable baseload power generation options and prevent countries from locking themselves into environmentally damaging and potentially economically costly technologies”.
“It’s a $500-million facility that we have set up to support countries that want to shift out of fuel-based energy into renewable energy and providing access to finance at a cheaper rate to be able to make that transition,” Adesina said.
“That would make it the largest solar zone in the world,” Adesina stated. The bank will work in partnership with various investors to also establish plants on the continent that will manufacture the solar panels for the project.
The continent is facing climate change impact with rising temperatures and reduced rainfall.
The Sahel, which lies between The Sahara and the Sudanian Savanna, offers a blaze of sunlight with little rain as it is the region where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth, according to the Great Green Wall initiative, a project that aims to reverse desertification and land degradation in the area.
Last month, IPS reported that as The Sahara desert continues to expand, it tears apart families, forces migration from rural areas to cities and has contributed to conflict for precious resources of water, land and food.
In July, IPS reported that the parts of Kenya had already warmed to above 1.5˚C — a figure deemed acceptable by global leaders during the 2015 Paris Agreement. But at such high temperatures a study found that over the last four decades livestock some Kenyan counties had decline by almost a quarter because of the temperature increase over time.
Siby Diabira, regional head for Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean for PROPARCO, a subsidiary of Agence Française de Développement (AFD) focused on private sector development, told IPS that last year the group did $1.76 billion in investment deals, half of which was in Africa. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS
However, the forum showed that there remain a number of investors looking to provide funding for renewables and other development project on the continent.
Siby Diabira, regional head for Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean for PROPARCO, a subsidiary of Agence Française de Développement (AFD) focused on private sector development, told IPS that last year the group did $1.76 billion in investment deals, half of which was in Africa. The AIF was still in its early stages to make a pronouncement on the success of the deals, Diabira said, but “so far so good”.
Diabira said the French development agencies aimed to be 100 percent compliant with the Paris Agreement and hence were investing heavily in renewable energy.
“I have been attending some of the boardroom [discussions]. It is a quite interesting gathering to have for the second year and to have so many different types of investors and projects that are raising funds for these types of events,” she said.
“We have been present in financing the first few rounds of renewable energy projects in South Africa and our idea is also as a [Development Financial Institution] DFI to be able to contribute to create this market for the commercial banks to come with us on those types of projects,” Diabira said.
Admassu Tadesse, President of the Trade and Development Bank, also pointed out that partnership agreements among the various banks and partners had strengthen their position in deals.
“If you have smart partnerships you can scale up collectively. With the African Development Bank we have signed a risk participation agreement to the tune of $300 million, which will allow us to move speedily into fields and have partners coming into deals alongside us.”
He said they expected to soon sign a deal with the European Investment Bank (EIB) that will again strengthen their position.
EIB vice president Ambroise Fayolle said they were attending this year with great intentions to develop transactions. He said it came on the back of their 2018 record year of investments in the continent, which amounted to some $3.6 billion — more than 50 percent of which was in the private sector. The bank signed 3 partnerships already, he said, none of which would have been possible without the AIF.
And as Adesina stated in a video message at the start of the forum, “Let the deals begin”.