Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa
The development objective of the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) is to support sustainable private-sector led economic growth in African countries through the efficient utilization of presently untapped clean energy resources. SEFA has been designed to operate under three financing windows: project preparation, equity investments and enabling environment support.
SEFA operates through three components:
- Project Preparation Grants: This window provides cost-sharing grants and technical assistance to private project developers/promoters to facilitate pre-investment activities for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Grant funding will target development activities from feasibility up to financial closure for projects with total capital investments in the range of USD 30 million – 200 million. It contains a total resource envelope of USD 21.7 million
- Equity Investments: This financing window seeks to address the lack of access to early stage capital for small-and medium-sized projects, as well as the low managerial and technical capability of smaller entrepreneurs and developers. It targets private seed and growth capital projects in Sub-Saharan Africa with
expected project cost between USD 10-80
million. It contains a total resource envelope of USD 35.5 million - Enabling Environment Grants: This window provides grants to support mainly public sector activities that create and improve the enabling environment for private sector investments in the sustainable energy space in Africa. This component is not bound by project size limits, and includes interventions spanning the off-grid, mini-grid, and grid-connected segments. It includes a total resource envelope of USD 30 million, with USD 10 million for green mini-grid activities
Access funding by first reviewing Conditions for Project Preparation Grant Requests.
SEFA is structured to respond to requests originated or championed by AfDB staff. All proposals received will be screened and pre-assessed against the basic eligibility criteria by the SEFA Secretariat, currently hosted in the Energy, Environment and Climate Change Department (ONEC) of AfDB. In the case of external requests meeting the basic eligibility criteria and presenting a good pipeline opportunity, SEFA Secretariat will work with other departments with the view of identifying a champion to lead the internal review and approval of a proposal.
Eligibility and conditions for project preparation grant requests can be found here.
USD 67.6 million
Proposals are accepted on a rolling basis. The turnaround period is currently estimated between 5 to 9 months but can vary depending
on the completion of proposals and in the capacity of the project sponsor to meet the requests for
information from the Bank throughout the review and approval process.