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Business News for Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Source: bloomberg.com
2021-01-12
The capital injected will allow Daystar Power to accelerate its growth in key markets such as Ghana
Daystar Power, a Nigerian solar power provider, has raised $ 38 million with support from the Investment Fund for Developing Countries and Morgan Stanley Investment Management to expand access to solar power in West Africa.
Lagos-based Daystar plans to replace “unreliable grid or overpriced polluting diesel generators” with clean, reliable power, said Jasper Graf von Hardenberg, the company’s chief executive and co-founder in an emailed statement Tuesday.
The company plans to expand its installed power capacity to 100 megawatts from the current 23 megawatts, it said. The capital injected will allow Daystar Power to accelerate its growth in key markets such as Nigeria and Ghana, and to open up in countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Togo.
Private sector players dominate solar hybrid development in most of West Africa, with financial backing from development finance institutions, BloombergNEF said in a July 2020 report. Nigeria, considered the largest potential market for mini-grids in West Africa, it has received at least $ 374 million in the last ten years from international donors for mini-grid development.
Africa’s largest economy has a small grid capacity of 2.8 megawatts as of 2019, and 52 of the 59 projects are powered by solar power, according to BloombergNEF.
Only 55% of the country’s population is connected to the national electricity grid and those experience frequent power outages of up to 15 hours per day.
STOA, a French impact infrastructure fund and one of Daystar’s backers, seeks to invest more than 50% of its capital in renewable energy in Africa, according to the statement. The corporation has an initial share capital of 240 million euros.
