New Telegraph

Clean energy: U.S. agency invests $10m on financing in Nigeria, others

The U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC), has invested $10 million in Nithio’s Financial Intermediary (Nithio FI), an AI-enabled clean energy financing platform, to scale clean energy financing in Africa.

 

Strongly aligned with DFC’s climate-focused investments agenda, this investment enables Nithio to scale its data-driven financing to impact over 3.5 mil lion people by 2025 and drive climate change adaptation efforts in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.

 

The investment, joined alongside FSD Africa Investments and EDFI-ElectriFI, finalised Nithio FI’s first round of $23 million. Nithio FI is a blended finance, permanent capital vehicle that is purpose-built to mobilise capital at scale.

 

Nigeria had set a target of expanding electricity access to 75 per cent of the population by 2020 and 90 per cent by 2030. It aims to generate 30 per cent of its total energy from renewable sources by 2030, Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, had set a major commitment for an economy that depends heavily on fossil fuels.

 

Africa’s most populous country needs more than 10 times its current electricity output to guarantee supply for its 198 million people – nearly half of whom have no access at all, according to power minister, Babatunde Fashola.

 

Campaigners welcome the shift to renewables as an efficient way to bring power to rural communities and help clean up a country with some of the world’s worst urban pollution rates.

“Ready access to electricity will reduce youth unemployment and increase productivity,” Ifeoma Malo, Nigeria country director at the global campaign group Power For All, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

 

“It will contribute greatly to reducing the carbon footprint of a growing energy demand by the urban population,” she added.

 

Nithio continues to scale its lending operations in key growth markets. To date, Nithio has invested in four high-impact off-grid solar and microfinance institutions in Kenya and Nigeria, including VEP, Rafode, Winock and A4&T Power Solutions.

 

It has built a strong pipeline and looks forward to continuing to build strong partnerships with companies focused on providing solar energy for powering homes, businesses and agricultural activities. These products not only bring clean energy access, they increase resilience to climate change.

 

“Nithio has created an innovative, data-driven solution that fills a large gap in the market to sustainably scale capital flows to the clean energy sector. By standardising credit risk, Nithio’s investments will have an outsized impact towards achieving universal energy access and combating the effects of climate change,” said Bobby Pittman, Nithio Co-founder and Founding Partner at Kupanda Capital.

 

As it moves to its next phase of growth, the team thanks Héla Cheikhrouhou for her service as chief executive officer and wishes her well in her return to the public sector as Regional Vice President for Middle East, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan at the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

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