By Temitope Ponle
The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), has secured 64 million dollars in grant funding from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD).
The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) also funded SEFA.
This is contained in a statement issued by the Communications and External Relations Department of the African Development Bank (AfDB) on Wednesday.
According to the statement, the announcement came during a panel discussion as part of the just concluded 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference Summit held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
The discussion was titled “Renewable energy for climate action, socio-economic transformation in Africa: the role of SEFA”.
SEFA, a multi-donor special fund managed by the AfDB, provides concessional finance to unlock private sector investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Commenting on the grant, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, Norway’s Minister for International Development, spoke on SEFA’s ongoing contribution to tackling some of the challenges hindering access to clean energy in Africa.
“Six hundred million Africans lack connection to electricity and 900 million do not have modern cooking stoves.
“With today’s announcement, NORAD – SEFA’s partner since 2018 – increased its contribution to NOK 535 million (54.72 million dollars).”
Also speaking, Joseph Nganga, GEAPP Executive Director for Africa said the alliance was proud to partner with the AfDB to expand access to clean, affordable, and reliable energy for communities across Africa.
“We are leapfrogging polluting energy sources and supporting decarbonisation across the energy sector.
“Together we will focus our efforts on sustainable energy projects with a high potential to be transformative, scalable, and replicable, and we look forward to supporting SEFA to catalyse and leverage additional financing for these pivotal projects,” Nganga said.
Dr Daniel Schroth, AfDB Director for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, spoke on the importance of the grant funding.
“These new contributions to SEFA are a recognition of the critical role played by SEFA in catalysing private sector investments in Africa’s sustainable energy sector.
“They will allow SEFA to further scale-up its investments over the coming years,” Schroth said.
Furthermore, Geoff Sinclair, Managing Director of the Renewable Energy Performance Platform said SEFA played a critical role in catalysing African sustainable energy development.
“SEFA plays a critical role in catalysing African sustainable energy development and convenes an important conversation about how to increase the scale and rate of implementation.
“It was clear that all actors in the sector need to collaborate more to do this, and I am looking forward to following up to put that collaboration into action,” Sinclair said.(NAN/vitalnewsngr.com)
