Analysis: Recovering the Missing Millions Owed To Africa’s Minigrids
By Jason Deign
Minigrid developers have called for changes to international financing programs after research found that only a fraction of the cash pledged was getting through to projects.
The minigrid funding commitment from international donor organizations is “in the billions,” says Daniel Kitwa, energy access finance advisor at the Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA). But “as much as these entities are well intentioned, there’s no standardization around how to make this commitment a reality,” Kitwa said in an interview.
In July, a consortium called the Mini-Grids Partnership published a report showing that development finance institutions had pledged more than $2 billion to support the build-out of minigrids worldwide since 2012, with close to $1.6 billion allocated to sub-Saharan Africa.
Photo courtesy of Ron Waddington.
