Claver Gatete, The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and Yasser El Gammal The World Bank Country Manager for Rwanda, signed an agreement of $ 48.9million for Scaling-Up Energy Renewable Program to support the government of Rwanda to increase electricity access through off-grid technologies and to facilitate private-sector participation in renewable off-grid electrification.
With the recently approved Rural Electrification Strategy, the Rwanda Renewable Energy Fund Project will help provide 445,500 new off-grid connections which will give about 1.8 million people access to off-grid electricity.
These new consumers can stay away from expensive and harmful fuels such as diesel, kerosene, and dry cell batteries as they will have proper electricity.
The project will also ensure Credit Co-operatives, Savings and commercial banks gain knowledge and experience in lending to a new sector which can then support further investments.
The Renewable Energy Fund will facilitate collaboration between Rwandan financial institutions and private sector to ensure quality provision of off-grid services and provide direct financing to qualified mini-grid developers.
“I hope that the Renewable Energy Fund becomes a vehicle to crowd-in resources to the off-grid electricity sector, attracting financing from both private sector and development partners,” said Yasser El-Gammal, World Bank Country Manager for Rwanda.
