American company Sun Africa and the Nigerian government have entered into an agreement to install solar energy production systems in some communities underserved by the national electricity grid. The project will be executed with a financial injection of a $1.5 billion loan from Exim Bank.
About 85 million Nigerians do not have access to electricity, this number the government is looking forward to crashing as it is determined to cut the gap in access to electricity between the country’s urban and rural areas through the extension of the national electricity grid in underserved states. To achieve this, the government of Nigeria has obtained a loan of 1.5 billion dollars from the American export credit agency Exim Bank.
These funds, mobilised by the American company Sun Africa (a supplier of off-grid solutions), will enable the implementation of numerous renewable energy projects, in particular solar photovoltaic stations with a duration of twenty years.
Speaking on the latest development, the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari said, “The federal government is continuing to work with the private sector to improve access to energy, create jobs and develop industry.”
With a gross domestic product (GDP) of 432.3 billion dollars in 2020 according to the World Bank, Nigeria, as the largest economy in Africa, has an electricity access rate of 60%, of which only 34% is in rural areas. It is in these areas not served by the network that the British company Bboxx began in 2020 several investments aimed at electrifying at least 20 million Nigerians by 2030.
It is also in this context that the African Development Bank (AfDB) granted a 1.5 million dollar grant via the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) in May for a 1 GW solar power project in Jigawa. The state is located in northern Nigeria. The funding will allow the finalisation of technical studies and a detailed master plan for the project, which aims to produce 1 GW of clean electricity over an area of about 2,000 hectares.
