Africa has 310 GW renewable energy potential
The African continent’s renewable energies potential is estimated at 310 Giga-Watts (GW), an expert from the African Development Bank (AfDB) said on Tuesday in Dakar, Senegal.
Hatem Fellah, Principal Agronomist at the AfDB made the statement during the opening of a sub-regional exchange meeting on domestic and renewable energies in the Sahel region.
The meeting was organized by the Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) within the framework of the Regional Program for Building Resilience to Food and Nutrition Insecurity in the Sahel (P2RS).
According to Hatem Fellah, the bank has initiated several projects including the Fund for Sustainable Energy in Africa (SEFA) and the Strategic Climate Fund
The Dakar meeting, according to him, should enable participants to identify the synergies and possibilities for cooperation in the domestic and renewable energy sub-sector and to highlight the main challenges in order to reach relevant and coherent sub-regional policy in the sub-sector.
As a reminder, The AfDB SEFA is a multi-donor trust fund anchored in a commitment of $95 million to support small-and medium-scale Renewable Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) projects in Africa.
The African Development Bank’s energy strategy identifies energy as crucial not only for the attainment of health and education outcomes, but also for industrialization, reducing the cost of doing business, unlocking economic potential and creating jobs.
Last week, the bank’s Board of Directors approved an equity investment of up to $25 million in ARCH Africa Renewable Power Fund (ARPF), a $250 million private equity fund for renewable energy projects across Sub-Saharan Africa.
ARPF will provide equity for the development and construction of 10 to 15 greenfield renewable energy projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, adding approximately 533MW of installed energy generation capacity from renewable sources in the region. This will provide both base load and peak load power in underserved markets.
ARPF projects will focus on mature technologies including wind, solar PV, small to medium hydro, geothermal and biomass.
