October 26, 2016/AfDB
During ECOWAS Sustainable Energy Week held in Accra, Ghana (October 17-19), the Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN) launched its third annual West Africa Forum for Clean Energy Financing (WAFCEF-3) business competition. The competition is open to all businesses and entrepreneurs operating and registered in any of the ECOWAS countries as well as foreign individuals and entities with projects in those countries.
This competition is made possible through the support of Power Africa, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Private Financing Advisory Network (PFAN), the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), and the ECOWAS Regional Centre for Renewable Energy Efficiency (ECREEE).
Only clean energy proposals requiring an initial capital investment in excess of US $1million are eligible. Shortlisted projects will attend a project development and financing workshop and will receive free individual professional mentoring to further develop their business plans. Submissions are due Monday, December 12, 2016.
During the final event that will take place in 2017, up to ten winners will present their business plans to investors, industry specialists and business executives interested in funding clean energy. These private sector judges select the top three projects to receive West African Clean Energy Financing awards.
The first edition of the WAFCEF event was held in 2013. The winner was SMEFUNDS GEB (Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Fundamentals – Green Energy and Biofuels), a Nigerian start-up and the first cooking fuel production facility to produce bio-ethanol gel cooking fuel from waste products. The start-up was awarded a SEFA grant of US $580,000 to support advisory and technical studies for business expansion.
The second WAFCEF competition was held in 2015 and the winner was Ivoire Hydro Energy, a project developer in Côte d’Ivoire, proposing the design, construction and operation of a 44-megawatt hydropower plant on the country’s Bandama River.
WAFCEF is fully aligned with AfDB’s New Deal for Energy for Africa, which priorities include scaled-up early stage support to projects providing access to modern, clean and reliable energy in the continent.
