CrossBoundary Energy Access, Africa’s first project financing facility for mini-grids, is open sourcing their approach to investing infrastructure capital into mini-grids across Africa.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 commits the global community to achieving universal energy access by 2030.
Mini-grids are a new way to achieve energy access as the International Energy Agency said that mini-grids would be the least cost method to connect at least 264m people by 2030.
“Mini-grids are infrastructure. Like traditional infrastructure, they form the basic physical systems of a nation—transportation, communication, water, and power. They therefore need long-term, low-cost capital just like other infrastructure assets.
“However, traditional approaches to infrastructure finance are hard to apply to mini-grids. Unlike traditional infrastructure, mini-grids are small, distributed and serve customers directly, rather than government off-takers.
“To finance these new and disruptive assets, the mini-grid sector needs new models of financing that allow infrastructure capital to flow into the underlying assets,” a statement by CBEA said.
