Grace Ashiru
The AfricaGoGreen Fund (AGGF) made headlines today when it announced that its second fundraising round was a success. It raised $47 million from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Nordic Development Fund (NDF), and the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) (SEFA).
With this money, AGGF will be able to finance more climate-friendly projects in Africa, such as buying high-efficiency appliances and industrial equipment, repairing old buildings and building new green buildings, and putting solar panels and battery storage on the roofs of homes, businesses, and factories.
IFC put up $17 million in equity, which includes money from the IDA20 Private Sector Window Blended Finance Facility. IFC also gave the fund $30 million in debt, which gave AGGF the long-term capital it needed to finish the second close fundraise.
The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa, the Nordic Development Fund, and the African Development Bank each put $10 million into equity. In December 2022, Calvert Impact Capital paid off an extra $10 million in debt.
AGGF is Africa’s first structured debt fund focusing on energy efficiency solutions. It was launched by KfW on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) at the beginning of 2021 and is managed by LHGP Asset Management.
AGGF has been fully operational since 2021. It has given money to AktivCo, a telecom energy services company, to develop clean energy solutions for powering telecommunication towers in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger, and to BBOXX, a pay-as-you-go solar-powered solutions provider, to speed up access to clean cooking solutions for millions of Africans.
The Solarise transaction, which invested in energy-efficient appliances in Kenya, South Africa, and Mauritius, and the AktivCo and BBOXX deals, were also recently closed by the AfricaGoGreen Fund.
KfW is happy to welcome new investors to the AfricaGoGreen Fund, which was started with seed money from the German government. We hope that more investors will do the same. “This successful second fundraising shows that the fund is on track to play a key role in the fair energy transition in Africa,” said KfW Head of Division Johannes Scholl.
IFC is partnering with AfricaGoGreen because of its innovative focus on energy efficiency. Henrik Elschner Pedersen, IFC’s Regional Industry Director in Africa for Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services, said, “AfricaGoGreen’s focus on energy efficiency is making critical capital available to businesses that are supporting the region’s energy transformation and expanding access to electricity, green building, and e-mobility solutions.”
