Three new resources for power project financing: Power Africa’s Project Preparation Facilities Toolbox, Understanding Power Project Financing handbook, and IRENA’s Sustainable Energy Marketplace

It’s not lack of interest, lack of options, or even lack of money that make energy deals in Africa so challenging to pull off. Often, all three issues need to be tackled in order to create bankable projects ready for investment. To help our partners move transactions forward and deliver more electricity across the continent, Power Africa now has three new resources related to power project financing.

By the Book: Understanding Power Project Financing

As part of our ongoing efforts to boost electricity generation in sub-Saharan Africa, Power Africa developed a new handbook titled Understanding Power Project Financing, designed to help Power Africa partners master the expansive, and often confusing, universe of financing options for power project development.

The Understanding Power Project Financing handbook is the go-to guide for African governments, project developers, and other stakeholders to identify and evaluate the various options for financing power projects, and to more readily attract private capital to develop power infrastructure.

Understanding Power Project Financing is the second book in a series developed in coordination with the U.S. Department of Commerce's Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) and the African Development Bank's African Legal Support Facility (ALSF), and represents Power Africa's partnership-driven approach to facilitating the growth of the power sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

Power Africa launched the ‘Understanding’ series to equip Power Africa partners and other stakeholders with the information and context necessary to interpret, negotiate and develop power projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The first book in this series is the popular Understanding Power Purchase Agreements handbook. With more than 10,000 copies in print and thousands more downloaded online, this guide is considered by power sector experts as one of the most vital resources to help drive private investment in power projects in Africa. A French-language version of Understanding Power Purchase Agreements was released in December 2015 at COP 21 in Paris.

A Sustainable Energy Marketplace for Africa

Also at COP21, Power Africa and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding surrounding IRENA’s Sustainable Energy Marketplace.

The objective of the Sustainable Energy Marketplace is to accelerate the scale-up of investments to promote the initiation, development and financing of low-carbon renewable energy projects by bringing together project owners, governments, financiers, and service and technology providers. This marketplace will make investment opportunities visible and easily identifiable for investors and help project developers to identify relevant funding sources and expertise.

Power Africa and IRENA are now working jointly to expand the availability of information that can advance renewable energy growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, this cooperation will explore sharing publicly-available information on power project opportunities and pipelines through the Marketplace and the Power Africa Tracking Tool. Together, Power Africa and IRENA will also promote the Marketplace among Power Africa partner organisations, including 12 US government departments and agencies, as well as large numbers of private investors and companies.

By working with IRENA, Power Africa aims to raise awareness about projects and mobilize concrete facilitation and hands-on support for project developers.

Project Preparation Facilities Toolbox

Project Preparation Facilities (PPFs) are mechanisms that support governments, investors, and developers of power projects by helping to expedite the technical, financial, legal, and regulatory processes involved in energy deals. As a companion resource to the0, this new document contains information on early-stage PPFs that currently operate in sub-Saharan Africa's energy sector.

Drawing on collective expertise in the region, the Power Africa team evaluated thirteen (13) PPFs and outlined the objectives, geography, funding sources, eligibility criteria, application processes, and other relevant details for each PPF.

This new toolbox offers our partners a quick-reference guide to yet another sector of the power project funding landscape. Together with Power Africa’s existing resources, including support from U.S. Government agencies and in-country Transaction Advisors working across Africa, these three new tools are helping to drive the deals that will allow us to reach our goals, and to create a brighter future for the continent.