Biggest Africa Solar Mini-Grid Firm Plans $650 Million Expansion

(Bloomberg) — WeLight, which operates more solar mini-grids in Africa than any other company, is planning a $650 million expansion to grow the number of people it serves 10-fold as its expands into countries with the two largest power-access deficits in the world. 

The company, founded in 2018, is seeking to expand into Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Romain de Villeneuve, WeLight’s chief executive officer. It already operates in Madagascar and Mali and is seeking a fifth country to expand to. 

The expansion adds to other steps on the continent to increase access. The World Bank and African Development Bank are spearheading a drive to invest tens of billions of dollars to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030. Many of those will need to be reached with off-grid solutions like mini-grids and the World Bank is backing funds to accelerate the deployment of the technologies.

“We are prepared for the next steps,” said de Villeneuve. “One million connections by 2030. I would like to be a bit earlier.”

The company, in which the International Finance Corp. bought a stake last month, plans to spend $450 million expanding in Nigeria and Congo, which together account for about 170 million of the more than 560 million people without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Another $200 million will be spent in in Madagascar, Mali and a new country, de Villeneuve said. 

He expects to source half of the finance from dedicated funds for so-called distributed renewable energy such as the World Bank-backed Dares program in Nigeria and the Mwinda Fund in Congo. The rest will come from equity sales, including to existing shareholders, and concessional debt. 

“Private money cannot finance everything,” he said.

Axian Group Ltd., Sagemcom SAS and Norfund AS are the founding shareholders in the company with the IFC the only entrant since 2018. 

Currently WeLight has around 65,000 connections, mostly in Madagascar, and is in the midst of an expansion to about 90,000, the CEO said.

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