Rwanda has approved extra financing for energy projects. The cabinet did this with an aim to close the gaps in power generation that the country has been working on.
The Approval
The approval happened on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame. He approved the loans and grants worth over $51 million to fund three major renewable energy projects.
The country targets to increase to 563MW of electricity before end of next year. It also plans to connect 70% of Rwanda’s households to electricity. The current generation capacity in the country is 208MW.
The country has a target to fund projects to increase electricity access through off-grid technologies. These off-grid technologies facilitate private sector participation in renewable off-grid electrification. Rwanda is a recipient of World Bank’s International Development Association(IDA) credit worth $27.5 million.
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The Finance Ministry and World Bank engaged in a new deal worth over $50 million in July. This is to fund more Renewable Energy project as part of increasing access to electricity in rural areas.
The new deal will see an extra 1.5 million Rwandan homes get electricity connection before the end of 2018.
The Renewable Energy Fund Project (REFP) will provide 445,500 new off-grid connections as part of the Rural Electrification Strategy introduced last year. The off-grid connections are giving about 1.8 million homes access to off-grid electricity by the end of 2018.
On Tuesday the cabinet approved a loan agreement with the African Development Fund (ADF). The loan agreement was worth 2.2 million Units of Account (UA) to scale up Energy Access project.
A 21.4 million grant for Rwanda Renewable Energy Fund Project was also approved. Alongside an $87.6million ‘Special Drawing Rights’ for priority skills.
The government wants to clear the issue of energy once and for all with additional loans and signings.
