The African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) are leading renewed calls for global investment towards an electrified Africa.
They made the call at the 19th Africa Energy Forum concluded recently in Copenhagen, Denmark, June 7-9.
"We are all looking at the same pipelines throughout the continent. As a result, there exist obvious areas of cooperation," said João Duarte Cunha, AfDB's Chief Climate Finance Officer.
The Africa Energy Forum (AEF) is the global investment meeting for Africa's power, energy, infrastructure and industrial sectors and serves as a verifiable platform to form partnerships, identify opportunities and collectively move the industry forward.
AfDB and ALSF participated alongside some 2,000 African regulators, ministerial officials, and private sector experts.
The Forum featured an AfDB-sponsored brainstorming session, entitled "Partnering towards Financial Close." The session included representatives of various project preparation facilities (PPFs) who discussed how best to improve their cooperation.
The meeting gathered representatives from the AfDB, ALSF, the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA), the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), the United States Trade and Development Agenda, the Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation, and ElectriFI.
These organizations will raise approximately US $500-800 million, separately, for development projects which address overlapping challenges. The intersecting mandates of the seven participating organizations 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 (PFAN).
At the end of the forum, participants resolved to maintain an informal network through which they will organize regular meetings, develop harmonized calls for proposals, and conduct joint advocacy activities.
Some 450 million citizens living in Africa lack reliable power. To address Africa's energy challenges, the AfDB launched the New Deal on Energy for Africa, which aims to provide universal energy access in Africa by 2025, by adding 160 GW of new generation capacity via the grid, delivering 130 million new grid connections and connecting 75 million through off-grid systems.
The African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) is a public international institution hosted by the African Development Bank Group.