AFRICA: Berlin and Washington invest $50 million in green energies via Sefa
On the sidelines of the recently concluded African Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, Germany and the United States of America announced $50 million in commitments to the Africa Sustainable Energy Fund (Sefa).
Germany is committing 40 million euros to the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (Sefa), a special multi-donor fund managed by the African Development Bank (AfDB). “With Sefa, the ADB demonstrates its commitment to seizing the opportunities offered by the energy transition and the deployment of renewable energies ,” explained Bärbel Kofler, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development ( BMZ).
For its part, Washington is promising $6.2 million as part of the Power Africa initiative, coordinated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). For David Thompson, who coordinates this initiative launched in 2013 by former US President Barack Obama, in the face of the climate emergency, it is necessary to move towards “development with low carbon emissions and resilience to climate change through solutions clean energy that are making a real difference to the lives of people across the African continent.
In Africa, Sefa focuses on sustainable development through renewable energies. It is within this framework that the fund contributes to the Desert to Power program, an ADB initiative aimed at accelerating the deployment of solar energy in the Sahel, the strengthening of the transport network, the deployment of off-grid solutions, improvement of the business climate, with the revitalization of national electricity companies.
Through this program which covers 11 African countries (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Chad), the AfDB wants to provide solar energy to 250 million people living in the Sahelian strip. The pan-African bank also aims to make the Sahel the largest solar energy production zone with an installed capacity of 10,000 MW. In addition to Germany and the United States of America, Sefa is funded by the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Spain, Sweden, as well as by the Nordic Development Fund (NDF) and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
