Yemisi Izuora
The African Development Bank (AfDB) alongside its subsidiary, the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF), are leading renewed calls for global investment towards an electrified Africa.
According to a press statement, the pair, advocated for this move during the 19th Africa Energy Forum, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, earlier this month.
“We are all looking at the same pipelines throughout the continent. As a result, there exist obvious areas of cooperation,” AfDB’s chief climate finance officer, João Duarte Cunha, said.
The Bank highlighted that mostly, requests for assistance relating to extractive resources contracts, public-private partnership negotiations, commercial creditor litigation, and debt negotiation.
The forum featured a brainstorming session, entitled Partnering towards Financial Close which included representatives of various project preparation facilities who discussed how best to improve their cooperation.
Among the attendees were representatives from the Development Bank of South Africa, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), the United States Trade and Development Agenda, the Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation, and ElectriFI.
These organisations, including the AfDB and ALSF, will each raise about $500-800 million for the development of projects to address overlapping challenges.
The AfDB noted that intersecting mandates of the seven participating organisations underscores the need to efficiently deploy their funds and to avoid the unnecessary duplication of efforts.
“If we want to scale up our partnership, we have to develop shared messages when speaking to stakeholders, clients, and investors,” explained Martin Hiller of REEEP and the Private Finance Advisory Network.