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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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Analysis: Beyond the Horizon: What Off-Grid Solar and Clean Cooking Can Reveal About the Road Ahead for Clean Cooling
Clean cooling is at an inflection point. The need is clear, proof-of-concept technologies exist, and the market is forming. The decisions made now will shape the sector for a generation. The experience of off-grid solar and clean cooking tells us what might lie over the horizon.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- Global
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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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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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Farming Under Solar: How Agriphotovoltaics Can Transform Rural Livelihoods in India
As India scales up solar energy, a critical question has emerged: Can this transition deliver clean power without displacing farmers from their land? According to Laxmi Sharma, Bidisha Banerjee, Subhodeep Basu and Ashok Gulati at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, the country's renewable energy expansion has been led by large, ground-mounted solar projects, often located on agricultural land. But while this model has been effective in scaling solar capacity, it has also created a disconnect between the energy and agriculture sectors, while limiting participation among farmers. They explore how agriphotovoltaics (Agri-PV) can address these issues by enabling the cultivation of crops beneath or between panel arrays, and discuss the pros and cons of different Agri-PV operating models.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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The Trade-offs in African Energy Access are Real: Why Electrification Efforts Must Prioritise Industrial Use over Household Connections
In the face of stagnating progress, a debate has emerged about whether energy access efforts in Africa should prioritize household or industrial and commercial electrification. Taiwo Odugbemi, a power sector regulation specialist and economist, pushes back on the argument that household access should take precedence over industrial uses — and the assertion that Africa can pursue both goals simultaneously. He explains why maintaining a dual focus may not be realistic, given the continent’s grid limitations and constrained public resources, and argues that African electricity policies must evolve to prioritize productive use, particularly in industrial and agro-processing hubs.
- Categories
- Energy
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