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Financing the Future: How Off-Balance-Sheet Special Purpose Vehicles Could Fund Africa’s Cleantech Transition
Across Africa, founders are tackling some of the world’s most difficult development challenges with cleantech solutions that require significant capital expenditure. But according to Julia Lawson-Johns, and Amar Inamdar at KawiSafi Ventures, beneath this wave of innovation lies a capital architecture that is still too shallow to enable the scale these firms now require. They argue that off-balance-sheet financing via special-purpose vehicles could provide cleantech enterprises with an alternative means of securing upfront liquidity to finance growth, and explore how these vehicles could power Africa’s cleantech transition.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Finance, Investing, Transportation
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British International Investment Commits $20 Million to Anzana Electric Group to Scale Distributed Renewable Energy Access Across Africa
This will support Anzana to accelerate the development of small and medium-scale hydropower projects in East, Central and Southern Africa, with the first project expected to be in Zambia.
- Categories
- Energy, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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African Development Bank and Government of Rwanda Launch $300 Million Energy Sector Results-Based Financing II Program Co-Financed With Aiib to Accelerate Universal Energy Access
The performance-based financing approach links disbursements to independently verified results to strengthen electricity transmission and distribution networks, improve grid reliability, and expand on-grid and off-grid connections among other targets.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: Inspired Evolution Backs CrossBoundary Energy’s Growth Through New Investment
The investment company has committed a US$40M to CrossBoundary Energy, supporting the construction of its portfolio.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Analysis: Powering Peace: Can Renewable Energy Help End Africa’s Conflicts?
Conflict is now at its highest level since World War II, driven by the breakdown of the international rules-based system, climate degradation, inequality, and demographic pressure—forces that are particularly acute across sub-Saharan Africa.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: African Development Bank Approves €93.9 Million to Expand Last-Mile Power Connections Under UREAP Phases I & II in Uganda
The funding will close a critical gap for the compensation of project-affected persons and completion of outstanding works, ensuring the project delivers its full development impact.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa’s Energy Future Needs More Than ‘Trickle-Down Electronomics’: Why the Debate Around False Trade-Offs Risks Leaving Millions Behind
Africa’s energy access debate is increasingly focused on the question of whether to prioritize household access or industrial and productive uses that can drive economic growth. But as Ryan Kilpatrick and Patrick K. Tonui at GOGLA argue, the deeper challenge is about understanding how electricity demand, income generation and productivity evolve in practice — and determining how best to balance the technologies, delivery models, financing structures and timelines involved in widespread electrification. They discuss these overlapping factors, and push back against the concept of “trickle-down electronomics” — i.e., the assumption that prioritizing industry will enable governments to expand grids to unserved areas and allow households to afford electricity over time.
- Categories
- Energy
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Iran War Cuts LPG Flows as Charcoal Demand Spikes in Africa and India
Cooking-fuel costs spike across Africa and South Asia after the Iran war disrupts Gulf liquefied petroleum gas supply, with conservationists warning the return to charcoal and firewood could undo a decade of clean-cooking progress.
- Region
- Global
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