Access to Renewable Energy through Microfinance

Benin, Cameroon, Kenya

OPEC FUND supported Participatory Microfinance (PAMIGA) to facilitate “Access to Renewable Energy through Microfinance” program in Benin, Cameroon and Kenya, through the development of a local offer of micro-loans. The Project consisted of the following activities: 1. Technical Assistance to Local Partner Financial Institutions. 2. Capacity Building of Solar Solution Supply Chain Actors. 3. Capacity Building for Rural Poor Population. 4. Impact Study tracking the effects of solar loans on clients of the financial institutions; and disseminating lessons learned through workshops, conferences and publications. The project has enabled PAMIGA and its partners to build solid partnerships between 11 Microfinance Institutes (MFIs) and 7 solar solution providers and a network of 88 last-mile solar technicians (EEs) in 3 Sub-Saharan African countries. Through these partnerships PAMIGA distributed close to 18,000 solar-powered products for both consumption (lighting, phone-charging, water-heating) and productive purposes (water pumps and irrigation systems). These products have provided access to clean energy to almost 90,000 low-income people and entrepreneurs, especially in rural areas of Africa. The MFI-solar provider partnerships built in by the support of OPEC FUND will continue to operate after the end of the project. Moreover, the project has also allowed to test two significant innovations that have high potential for replication and scale-up among PAMIGA’s network and beyond: Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and mini-grid sites.