US $150m has been approved by World Bank and the Clean Technology Funds (CTF) for the implementation of the Off-grid electrification project (ROGEP) which will facilitate access to electricity in 19 African.
ROGEP is an off-grid solar electrification project that will be implemented in West and Central Africa. The beneficiary countries of the programme are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. The completion of this project is expected to provide electricity to approximately 1.7 million people.
The ROGEP project will be under West African Development Bank (BOAD). Part of the amount corresponds to a line of credit with a fixed limit of US $140m, the other part represents a grant of US $10m from the International Development Association (IDA), a structure of the World Bank.
To finance this revival, CTF is also providing US $74.7m in funding, including US $7.5m in grants. The project is based on two main axes. It will facilitate the development of the regional autonomous solar market, on the one hand, and improve access to financing for companies operating autonomous solar systems, on the other.
Moreover, practically the project will make it possible to detect the barriers that affect the autonomous solar market and raise awareness among policy makers so that they can remove them. It will also provide a framework for the development of regional quality assurance standards for solar equipment, while allowing beneficiary countries to adopt a common external tariff, which will facilitate cross-border trade in autonomous solar products.
