Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund lending €29m to Burkina Faso energy project

The West African country of Burkina Faso is to get a new large-scale renewable energy plant. Located some 250km south-east of the nation’s capital city of Ouagadougou, near the town of Pâ, the new solar energy plant will supply all the electricity it produces to Burkina Faso’s national power utility, La Société National D’électricité Du Burkina Faso (SONABEL).

The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a member of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), is lending the project’s developer, Urbasolar SAS, 80% of the capital needed for the construction of the new 30MW facility. EAIF is the sole lender to the project, providing €29 million of the estimated €35.4 million development cost. Financial close (the transfer of funds from lender to borrower) is expected by the second quarter of the year.

Paromita Chatterjee, an investment director at EAIF’s managers, Ninety One says, “Harnessing Burkina Faso’s sunshine to improve its future prospects will bring many benefits to the country and make an important contribution to fighting global warming. This project is a perfect example of how EAIF’s public-private partnership model can have lasting economic, social and environmental impacts while mobilising private capital and enterprise to create new infrastructure.”

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