Nigeria Gets $750m World Bank Loan for Electricity, Replace Diesel Generators in Homes, Businesses
- The World Bank has approved about $750 million loan for the DARES project in Nigeria
- The DARES project reportedly aims to provide about 17.5 million Nigerians with access to electricity
- Also, the World Bank said the project aims to eliminate noisy and polluting diesel generators with clean energy in Nigeria
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The World Bank has approved another $750 million loan for the Nigeria Distributed Access via Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) project.
The bank said in a statement on Saturday, December 16, 2023, that the project would leverage over $1 billion of private capital and significant parallel financing from development partners.
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The loan is usually given to the poorest countries in the world
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The International Development Association (IDA) financed the project, including $100 million from the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet and $200 million from the Japan International Corporation Agency.
The IDA is the World Bank's fund for the world's poorest countries.
Other partners in the programme include USAID, the German Development Agency (GIZ), SEforAll, and the African Development Bank (AfDB).
The project aims to provide about 17.5 million Nigerians with new or improved access to electricity via DARES.
DARES would utilize creative financing solutions to scale up Nigeria's private sector-led clean electricity provision.
More than 85 million Nigerians have no access to electricity
According to a Vanguard report, as of 2021, over 85 million Nigerians lacked access to electricity, and businesses and households with access to the national grid faced unreliable and insufficient power supply.
The bank said:
"NEP has also resulted in the creation of over 5,000 private-sector local green jobs in Nigeria.
"The program will prioritize gender and inclusion by building on the NEP's gender-related actions to facilitate access to electricity for disadvantaged female-headed households and women-led MSMEs, as well as to increase women's employment in the energy sector.
The loan will finance the replacement of dirty generators for clean energy in Nigeria
The World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, said the team was committed to providing many more Nigerians with access to electricity.
He stated that the bank is committed to energy-based access in Nigeria with the DARES initiative, the single largest distributed project of the World Bank globally.
Chaudhuri said about 17.5 million Nigerians would benefit from the programme via the deployment of standalone solar and mini-grids and replace over 280,000 polluting and expensive diesel generators as an essential step to achieving clean energy in Nigeria.
The project will support Nigeria in closing its electricity access gap and boost its solution towards sustainable, efficient, and economically profitable electricity supply.
Per reports, IDA loans have maturities ranging from 25 to 40 years, with grace periods of five to 10 years and interest rates of 1.5% to 2.8%, depending on if the borrower is eligible.
Zero-interest, 40-year Tenure, Other Things to Know About Tinubu's $3.5bn World Bank Loan
Legit.ng reported that The request for a $3.45 billion loan to pay for five things was granted on Monday, October 23, 2023, by Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC)
The fund is expected to be directed to five projects: initiatives for women’s empowerment, the electricity sector, renewable energy, the states’ resource mobilization programme, and the teenage girls’ initiative for learning and empowerment.
According to Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, the FG would proceed to receive the $3.5 billion “zero-interest” loan payable over 40 years with a 10-year moratorium.
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Source: Legit.ng
