The African Development Bank (AfDB), through its Sustainable Energy Africa Fund for Africa, has approved a one million dollars reimbursable grant to develop bioenergy plants in Ghana and Sierra Leone.

The funding, Development Diaries gathered, is expected to boost electricity supply in the West African countries.

AfDB, in a statement, noted that the reimbursable grant will strengthen the project’s bankability by supporting technical feasibility studies and regulatory structuring.

‘The plants will be co-located with wood processing facilities to provide biomass from sustainably cultivated and certified plantations’, the bank said in a statement.

‘They will provide electricity and heat to the wood processing machinery and nearby industrial parks. The Sierra Leone plant will also provide electricity to surrounding communities’.

The Managing Partner of NewAfrica Impact Limited, the implementing firm, Mads Asprem, applauded the approval of the project.

‘The SEFA process has already helped us increase the standard of our development work, including the environment impact assessments’, he said.

‘With the project approved, we will create a new efficient solution for combining the generation of energy for productive use and household consumption through mini-grids.

‘The plants are expected to add ten megawatts of electrical and 22 megawatts of thermal capacity in total.

‘They will provide electricity to 5,000 households and create 125 temporary jobs during the construction phase, with another 60 people employed to operate the plants’.

The AfDB also said 250 more indirect jobs will be created, of which 30 percent will go to women, and the project will cut carbon emissions by 45 ktCO2 per year.

Photo source: AfDB