Engie Energy Access, a minigrids solution provider in Africa, and CrossBoundary EnergyAccess Nigeria (CBEA), a project financier of minigrids in Africa, have reached a project finance agreement to build a $60 million portfolio of minigrids in Nigeria. This is the largest minigrid project finance transaction in Africa to date, with the projects expected to connect more than 150,000 people to electricity in Nigeria for the first time.
Construction of the minigrids will happen over the next four years. The electricity will be provided to residential, commercial, and productive customers. This is expected to have a direct impact on the agricultural productivity, light-scale construction, and industrial activity in those communities.
CBEA will own the projects and finance the development and construction activities, according to a company statement. Engie will provide long-term operations and maintenance services.
CBEA uses a blended finance approach to invest in minigrids and will provide the private capital for the transaction alongside the Performance Based Grant (PBG) funded by the World Bank and administered by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) and the Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP), according to the company.
“Financing structures like the one between CBEA and Engie in Nigeria provide a framework for bringing even more private capital into the sector,” said Tessa Dignam, senior legal counsel at CBEA.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
4 comments
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.