The World Bank has approved 50 million dollars for a solar powered agricultural expansion project in Nigeria and five other African countries. The funding will support efforts to improve productivity and reduce post harvest losses in a sector that employs more than a third of Nigeria’s workforce.
According to a report, the project will deploy solar powered cold rooms, refrigerators, water pumps and grain mills across Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Implementation will be led by Clasp, a Washington DC based non profit organisation focused on clean energy access and energy efficiency.
The financing is being channelled through the Productive Use Financing Facility, known as PUFF, under Mission 300, a programme backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Mission 300 aims to mobilise large scale funding to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.
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The initiative has received additional backing from development partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, which has committed 12 million dollars to the programme. Its president, Rajiv Shah, said the project could be scaled up further as implementation progresses across participating countries.
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