African Development Bank backs electrification programme in Côte d’Ivoire
The AfDB has approved €22.9 million to support Côte d’Ivoire’s Programme Électricité Pour Tous.
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The African Development Bank has approved up to XOF 15 billion (€22.9 million) to support the second phase of Côte d’Ivoire’s Programme Électricité Pour Tous (PEPT).
The financing includes up to €16 million from the bank and up to €6.9 million from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA).
The transaction marks the first African Development Bank subscription to a local currency social bond in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) region. The project will finance 400,000 new electricity connections over 2025-2026, benefiting 2.2 million people, of which 35% live in rural communities. It is a flagship initiative under Mission 300 – the bank’s programme to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.
The African Development Bank, the Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund (EAAIF), and Norfund each anchored a portion of the bond.
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Brilliant move by AfDB to pilot local currency socal bonds in the WAEMU region. The dual funding structure with SEFA coverage lets them de-risk the transaction while demonstrating viability for future issuances. What's particularly clever is linking this to the 400,000 connections target it creates a quantifiable perfomrance metric that bond investors can actually track against the Mission 300 framework.