Sudan

More than a thousand units will be installed on farms in two Sudanese states under a program financed by the African Development Bank. Consultants interested in organizing the program have less than two weeks to declare their interest.

The International Renewable Energy Agency has combined energy infrastructure commitments across a huge swathe of the continent with hundreds of regional sites which offer rich solar and onshore wind potential, to determine what could be possible.

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.

An overview of the state of solar across the continent by trade body the Africa Solar Industry Association has highlighted a patchy policy landscape where clean power ambitions are often not followed through.

According to the country’s Ministry of Energy, an unspecified UAE solar company has committed to building several large scale PV plants across the country. These new projects would be granted a 20-year PPA and would be Sudan’s first solar parks.

The African Development Bank last year disclosed a plan to install 10 GW of solar in the deserts of the Sahel. A recent summit held in Burkina Faso may have brought the ambitious project a step closer.

The FIT program, which is being developed with the support of the UNDP, is expected to encourage grid-connected renewable energy projects as well as off-grid generation.

The Practical Action non-governmental organisation (NGO) won a Zayed Future Energy Price last week at Abu Dhabi’s Sustainability Week for its work to reduce poverty. The NGO shares its experience of solar PV deployment in the developing world.