Burkina Faso

The PAYG solar start-up, which is a darling of impact investors, has formed a joint venture with French cotton farming giant Geocoton to establish a foothold in Burkina Faso and says it is aiming to offer its solar home systems to 2 million customers.

The Africa Solar Industry Association has recorded almost 2 GW of large scale project announcements since the start of last month with 18 countries planning new clean power infrastructure and including energy storage in the plants.

The funds will be used to implement the country’s Large Scale Solar and Rural Electrification Project. They will also support the government in outlining an upcoming tender for 325 MW of solar coupled with 335 MWh of storage capacity.

The Nagréongo power station is located about 30km northeast of Ouagadougou and scheduled for commissioning at the end of 2021.

Politicians across the continent will have to decide between their heavily-indebted state utilities or embracing the energy transition, according to one energy analyst.

The monocrystalline facility, planned near the town of Pâ by Swiss-owned developer Urbasolar following a tender, will help the government towards its target of reaching 200 MW of solar capacity this year.

The former need not necessarily relate to conventional lithium-ion batteries, however, as a recent webinar staged by Solarpower Europe and EU body GET.invest discovered.

The European Investment Bank will lend more than half the cost of expanding the first solar project built by the West African nation’s electric utility, from 37 MW to 50 MW.

Pending final closing, the Electrification Financing Initiative has announced it is considering private equity investments of €1.5 million to two French firms operating in Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso and Senegal, and $1.5 million to a Tanzanian business operating in Tanzania and Uganda.

The solar park is being built by French developer GreenYellow and is expected to come online by mid-2021.