The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) and partners co-organized in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, an event on Friday, September 4 to launch and promote the second West Africa Clean Energy Finance Forum (WAFCEF-2).
The partners include the Climate Technology Initiative Private Financing Advisory Network (CTI PFAN), Regional Clean Energy Investment Initiative (RCEII) together with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the ECOWAS Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE), Banque ouest africaine de développement (BOAD), and the African Biofuels and Renewable Energy Company (ABREC), which is affiliated with the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID).
The purpose of the forum is to reach out and attract potential start-ups and existing companies with promising clean energy projects to enter into the business plan competition. West African businesses selected through the Business Plan Competition will receive free mentoring to help them polish their business plans, develop convincing investment pitches, and formulate a commercially, financially, socially and environmentally viable growth strategy that in turn will significantly enhance the possibility of obtaining financing.
WAFCEF-2 final Forum will be held in April 2015 where up to 10 qualified projects will have the opportunity to present their Business Plans to invited investors and make a pitch for financing. As part of the competition, an Expert Panel including investors, industry specialists and business executives with a keen interest in enabling cleaner and greener projects in West Africa, will judge the Finalists' presentations and select the top three projects for the West African Clean Energy Financing Awards.
At the launch of the competition, Joao Duarte Cunha, SEFA Coordinator, noted that "WAFCEF is all about preparing a solid business plan for engaging with financiers. In this regard, all participants in WAFCEF are winners from the start".
Eligibility requirements include clean energy projects in an ECOWAS country not exceeding US $50 million. For more information on the terms and conditions of WAFCEF II, see the documents in the documents section on the side of this page (guidelines for the competition and the application form for the project).
The submission of the Excel project data sheet/application form must be sent to wafcef-2@cti-pfan.net by 23:59 GMT, October 7, 2014.
About the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA): SEFA is a multi-donor facility to support the sustainable energy agenda in Africa, operating through three components: (i) grants to facilitate the preparation of medium-scale renewable energy generation and energy efficiency projects (ii) equity investments to bridge the financing gap for small- and medium-scale renewable energy generation projects and; (iii) support to public sector in improving the enabling environment for private investments in sustainable energy. SEFA is endowed with US $60 million from the Governments of Denmark and United States and hosted by the Energy, Environment and Climate Change Department of the AfDB.
Contacts:
Media: Penelope Pontet de Fouquieres, Communications, tel. +216 71101996, mobile. +216 24 66 36 96, p.pontetdefouquieres@afdb.org
Technical contact: Joao Duarte Cunha; SEFA Coordinator; j.cunha@afdb.org
