Africa Development Bank commits more funds for renewable energies in Africa

The African Development Bank (AfDB) will soon launch ‘Green Baseload’ Facility to provide concessional finance to support reliable and affordable renewable energy, the bank’s president Akinwumi A. Adesina said.

Speaking at the One Planet Summit in Nairobi, Adesina said that the Bank would commit at least US$25 billion towards climate finance.

In his words, the Bank is on course to achieve its target of allocating 40% of its funding to climate finance by 2020, a year ahead.

The Bank’s commitment on the target, the highest among all multilateral development banks, has progressed steadily from 9% in 2016 to 28% in 2017 and 32% in 2018, the Abidjan-based institution said in a statement.

“The required level of financing is only feasible with the direct involvement of the entire financial sector,” said Adesina.

The ‘green baseload’ facility will be launched under the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA 2.0) to provide concessional finance and technical assistance to support the penetration and scale-up of renewable energy, to provide affordable and reliable renewable energy baseload, the former Nigerian agriculture minister explained.

The AfDB’s project will be supported by the World Bank. The Washington-based financial institution said in a statement that it had pledged $22.5 billion for 2021-2025.

Some of the beneficiaries of the World Bank’s funding would include projects in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya.