Power Africa launches new partnerships

USAID-funded Power Africa will forge several new partnerships and launch new tools during the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP 21) to support the development of renewable energy across sub-Saharan Africa.

Power Africa announced several new partnerships at COP21, including:

• A new partnership with the Government of Norway, which aligns the collective investments of the United States and Norwegian governments in renewable energy; expands off-grid and mini-grid efforts; leverages Norway’s expertise in hydropower; supports regional power pools to increase renewable energy generation; and supports gender-inclusive growth in the power sector.

Through this Memoranda of Understanding, the Government of Norway, through Norfund, is committing to bringing 1,500 MW online over a five-year period, contributing to Power Africa’s overall 30,000 MW electricity generation goal.

• A new partnership with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), which will focus on expanding information-sharing to further renewable energy growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, this cooperation will explore sharing publicly-available information on specific project opportunities and pipelines through IRENA’s Sustainable Energy Marketplace and Power Africa’s transaction tracking database.

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.

• A partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development(DFID) to expand and leverage investments in cleaner energy; support power pools and other interventions to increase cleaner energy power generation and access to power through regional integration.

This agreement includes Power Africa’s collaboration on the DFID-led Energy Access campaign, which will specifically focus on how to rapidly accelerate growth in the African household solar industry. This partnership will also support efforts to advance the full participation of women in the energy sector; support the regional development of the geothermal sector; and strengthen donor coordination in the sector by maximizing impact of interventions.