Crossboundary Energy Access, an investment platform which is project financing solar-powered mini-grid projects in rural Africa, has secured US$50 million funding.
A grant of €20 million (US$22.66 million) has been made to Namibia’s government-owned electric utility company for the development of the African country’s first grid-scale battery storage project.
Two solar-plus-storage projects in Cameroon will be equipped with modular, pre-assembled generation and battery solutions from Norway-headquartered renewable energy power producer Scatec.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) supplies most of the world’s cobalt, but exporting semi-finished or finished products rather than raw materials would better help the country capture the value of the metal used in high power lithium-ion batteries.