Menu

GreenWish Partners, a French investment firm that specializes in renewable energy in Sub Saharan Africa, has announced that it plans to build two 50 megawatt solar power plants in Northern Nigeria.

Speaking to Bloomberg today from Paris, Charlotte Aubin-Kalaidjian, GreenWish Partners’ CEO, said the plants are expected to cost between $130 million and $150 million with construction work commencing next year. Aubin-Kalaidjian said one of the plants will be located in Kaduna State, but she declined to reveal the location for the second plant. Both plants will be connected to the national grid, she said.

Aside from the solar plants in Northern Nigeria, the GreenWish boss further said the company is currently developing off-grid solar projects for Nigerian businesses, including a bank with 350 branches and 2,000 telecoms towers.

“Nigeria is a very interesting market as it presents all the characteristics we’re looking for with regard to energy,” Aubin-Kalaidjian said. “There’s a high dependence on fuel oil and diesel, which are expensive and unreliable sources of energy, and there’s a political will to develop solar energy, especially in the northern regions where gas is less available.”

The Federal Government of Nigeria is currently aiming to diversify the country’s electricity supply away from gas to other alternative sources, including solar power, in a bid to end chronic electricity shortages in Africa’s largest economy. In July, the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company signed power purchase agreements with 12 firms for the construction of solar power plants with a total capacity of 975 MW at an estimated cost of $2.5 billion.

GreenWish’s solar plants in Nigeria are part of the company’s plan to develop 600 MW of renewable energy assets in Sub Saharan Africa by 2020 for about $1 billion, Aubin-Kalaidjian told Bloomberg. The company has on-grid and off-grid projects in Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast, with plans to open an office in Kenya. Later this month, the company will inaugurate a 20 MW solar power plant in Senegal, which will provide electricity to 160,000 people through the country’s national grid.

“Solar is easy to replicate, it’s more competitive than fuel oil in isolated sites. We believe there’s a potential of rapid expansion but the governments need to set up an adequate regulatory and contractual framework,” Aubin-Kalaidjian said. “Solar power will not solve all of Africa’s electricity problems but can do for a good part of it.”

GreenWish Partners was founded in 2010 by Aubin Kalaidjian to build a renewable energy investment platform dedicated to Sub-Saharan Africa. In June this year, Denham Capital, a US private equity firm, committed about $250 million to fund GreenWish’s projects across Africa.