IFC, Canada make investments $5 million in Husk Nigeria to spice up entry to scrub vitality in underserved communities 

The Worldwide Finance Company (IFC), alongside the Canadian Authorities, has made a $5 million funding in Husk Nigeria to scale up the deployment of photo voltaic hybrid mini grids in underserved communities in Northern Nigeria.

The Funding was introduced on Thursday in an announcement issued in Lagos.

The financing is meant to develop entry to reasonably priced, dependable, and renewable electrical energy in off-grid areas, which nonetheless constitutes one in every of Nigeria’s best improvement hurdles because of vitality poverty.

The ability will assist construct and run as many as 108 mini-grid websites by Husk, probably connecting round 115,000 people and companies with roughly 28,750 new electrical energy connections.

That is the primary funding beneath the IFC Distributed Entry by means of Renewable Power Scale-up (DARES) Platform, a $200 million debt facility that was signed in November 2024.

The platform seeks to catalyze private-sector options for increasing electrical energy entry all through West and Central Africa.

The DARES Platform is a complementary adjunct to the World Financial institution-financed Nigeria DARES Venture, which has an authorized price range of $750 million and was launched in December 2023, with the Rural Electrification Company (REA) because the implementing company.

The 2 have thus been synchronized for focused interventions to offer new or improved vitality entry by means of decentralized renewable vitality (DRE) options to over 17.5 million Nigerians.

Venture to price $25 million – IFC 

Husk’s undertaking has an general price of round $25 million, based on the IFC. The financing package deal value $5 million features a senior mortgage of $2.5 million from IFC’s account and a concessional subordinated mortgage of $2.5 million from the Canada-IFC Renewable Power Program for Africa.

It mentioned that the ability is structured as a revolving mortgage, permitting Husk to repay and redraw funds a number of instances in the course of the undertaking’s implementation.

What they’re saying: 

Regional Vice President for Africa on the IFC, Ethiopis Tafara, described the event as “an progressive strategy to tackling one in every of Africa’s most urgent challenges—vitality entry.

Tafara famous additional, “By partnering with Husk, a number one renewable vitality developer globally, by means of the primary undertaking beneath the DARES Platform, we aren’t solely addressing the instant electrical energy wants of underserved communities in Nigeria but in addition laying the inspiration for a scalable mannequin that may be replicated throughout the continent.” 

Co-founder and CEO of Husk, Manoj Sinha, mentioned, “ This progressive debt facility is strictly what the minigrid trade must scale — blended, long-term and reasonably priced capital.” 

Nation Director, Husk Nigeria, Olu Aruike, famous, “Including 108 new communities to our minigrid portfolio with IFC assist is a crucial step towards our aim of deploying no less than 250MW of decentralised renewable vitality initiatives in Nigeria.” 

Extra insights 

• DARES Platform is part of the World Financial institution’s complete, programmatic engagement in Nigeria’s energy sector to assist the FGN notice its Power Transition Plan (ETP) imaginative and prescient.
• The undertaking goals to extend entry to electrical energy companies for households and MSMEs with personal sector-led distributed renewable vitality technology.
• Information from REA web site reveals that 3,244,900 households are to be powered beneath the undertaking and impacting the lives of 17.5 million Nigerians within the course of.