EVENTS

The African Development Bank’s Board of Governors approved on 31 October 2019 the conversion of the Bank-administered multi-donor trust fund SEFA into a “special fund”, to amplify its development impact by allowing it to deploy a wider range of financial instruments beyond the current scope of technical assistance. Specifically, the “new” SEFA avails technical assistance and concessional finance instruments to remove market barriers, build a more robust pipeline of projects and improve the risk return profile of individual investments.

SEFA’s overarching goal is to contribute to universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy services for all in Africa, in line with the Bank’s New Deal on Energy for Africa and Sustainable Development Goal 7. Under the new structure, the Fund will focus its interventions on three thematic areas: (1) green mini-grids to accelerate energy access to underserved populations; (2) green baseload to support clean generation capacity in the grid; and (3) energy efficiency to optimize energy systems and reduce energy intensity.

SEFA was established in 2011 in partnership with the Government of Denmark. This partnership has since grown with the involvement of the Governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Germany, as well as from the Nordic Development Fund. SEFA is housed in the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Department (PERN) under the Power, Energy, Climate, and Green Growth (PEVP) complex.

Objectives

The event will first serve to present SEFA 2.0 to a wide range of stakeholders, in particular its three thematic areas and new financing instruments. Specific objectives include:

• officially launch the SEFA Special Fund and its main features, highlighting key achievements to date;
• identify and discuss key defining themes in scaling-up renewables in Africa and confirm SEFA’s role in addressing them;
• provide a platform to donors to reaffirm their support to SEFA, underscoring alignment with their institutional priorities and announce new financial commitments.

Register via this link: https://afdb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FtAeIsvLTrawDNXXGRJqDg