A firm with Kenyan links is set to receive a Sh2 billion equity funding from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for investment in renewable energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa.
Berkeley Energy, which has an office in Nairobi, will receive the funding to boost its $200 million (Sh20.6 billion) Africa Renewable Energy Fund (AREF), which invests in viable wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass and solar projects.
The firm is one of the companies involved in the 1,000 megawatts (MWs) Corbetti Geothermal Project in southern Ethiopia and has also invested in several hydropower projects in Uganda.
“The AREF transaction is anticipated to have project-level impacts in the form of improved services offered to customers and environmental impacts that make a contribution to green industries,” the IFC says in its disclosures.
IFC did not specify the stake it would hold in the Fund. Eddy Njoroge, a former managing director of power producer KenGen #ticker:KPLC, serves as a member of Berkeley Kenya’s investment committee.
Other Kenyans working with Berkeley include Rachel Mutahi, AREF’s finance manager, and Paul Kizito, a former finance manager at G4S Kenya Group but who is now the fund’s finance controller.