Kindergarten teacher, Fatima Hagou, recalled that just a generation ago, when the sun went down over the Moroccon countryside, her rural village of Dar Laain ground to a halt and locals bedded down for the night.
Nowadays, Dar Laain, about 25km south-west of Marrakech, booms with life after dark, thanks to the expansion of the electricity grid. Residents have benefited from youth clubs, a communal bathhouse and a busy women’s farming collective.
“I cannot imagine life in the village without electricity,” said Hagou. “It brings us hope.”
With other development finance institutions, African Development Bank is playing a critical role in financing electricity projects.
The bank’s operations helped to install 291 MW of new power capacity in 2019, 60 per cent of which was renewable, according to the institution’s Annual Development Effectiveness Review 2020, published on November 19.
The bank also installed or improved 435 km of power distribution lines and supplied 468,000 people with new electricity connections.
