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British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor, has announced a $7 million debt facility for Okra, a provider of mesh-grid technology for off-grid communities. The investment will help accelerate access to reliable and clean electricity, primarily in Nigeria.
Nigeria has one of the world’s largest electricity access deficits, with an estimated 90 million people lacking reliable and affordable power. Many live in small, dispersed communities where conventional mini-grids can be costly to deploy, while solar home systems may not provide sufficient power for businesses and other productive uses.
Mesh-grids are designed to help address this gap. They combine solar generation, battery storage and smart controls, allowing neighbouring homes and businesses to share electricity in a cost-efficient way. This can provide more power than typical solar home systems while reducing the infrastructure requirements associated with conventional mini-grids.
BII’s financing will enable Okra to procure equipment for approximately 150,000 new connections, with the potential to provide electricity to 750,000 people in rural Nigeria for the first time. Okra currently has an installed base of more than 13,000 households and over 2.3MW of installed capacity. The facility will enable the company to increase its connections more than 10-fold.
Geoffrey Manley, director and head of infrastructure and climate debt for Africa and South Asia at BII, said: “For innovative energy companies such as Okra, access to the right type of finance can be just as important as the technology itself. Our flexible facility will enable Okra to procure critical components earlier and at greater scale, reducing costs and shortening delivery times. We believe this will help demonstrate the commercial viability of mesh-grids and establish the model as an increasingly important part of Africa’s distributed renewable energy market.”
Afnan Hannan, chief executive officer of Okra, said: “Every month a project is delayed is another month a community goes without power. Until now, we would only order components once a transaction had closed, in batches of a few thousand units. With BII’s facility, we are procuring long lead time components, batteries, and solar PV equipment upfront and in volume, reducing costs and having stock ready when a developer signs. Equipment reaches Nigeria in less than a third of the time – getting the lights on sooner.”
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