Talks are underway to build power connections to Europe and elsewhere in Africa. Other big solar plants in the pipeline are likely to be delayed by the economic uncertainty around Covid-19, says Jaakko Kangasniemi, CEO of Finland’s development finance institution, FinnFund.
He says governments are unlikely to back power-purchasing agreements while finances are being restructured. But, Kangasniemi says, the money is not going to be idle: instead, developers are targeting smaller industrial and commercial solar projects “like a factory or a block of apartments, or a neighbourhood […]. We are not talking a quarter of a million solar panels, but a few hundred or a thousand panels, around 1MW.”
READ MORE African debt: What to watch in 2021
One recent example: one of Zimbabwe’s biggest coldchain and tobacco players, Nhimbe Fresh, has signed a deal with South African startup Sun Exchange for
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