Mapping and Feasibility Study of Green Investment Opportunities

Sub-Saharan African countries are facing ever-worsening energy crisis and increasingly serious environmental challenges, which hamper economic development, reduce competitiveness, and seriously negatively impact low-income populations. To address these issues, the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) has been helping develop a green investment support mechanism called SUNREF (Sustainable Use of Natural Resources and Energy Financing). Therefore, AFD mandated Econoler and BIO by Deloitte to assess the short- and medium-term potential of implementing SUNREF in ten Sub-Saharan African countries to support small and medium-sized investments in energy efficiency, sustainable energy and environmental performance projects.

The assignment consisted of two phases for which Econoler carried out the following tasks:  

• Phase 1: The project was to map the financial and technical support needs for target investments by carrying out the following tasks for five countries assigned to Econoler:
• Establishing an overview of the local environmental/energy and banking sectors and the economic and regulatory environments.
• Carried out preliminary analysis of the market potential.
• Mapped the collecting information and identified the countries and themes such as energy, depollution, etc. to target in Phase 2.
• Phase 2: The objective was to conduct a feasibility study on establishing SUNREF programs in four selected countries. Econoler carried out the following specific tasks in its assigned countries, Ghana and Nigeria:
• Conducting a detailed market study on potential investments in targeted themes.
• Carried out a detailed assessment of investment barriers (institutional, regulatory, financial, technical, etc.)
• Analyzing past experiences, current local incentives and partner institutions which could provide technical assistance during SUNREF implementation.
• Carried out a detailed assessment of potential local financial institutions (LFIs) to partner with under the program.
• Recommended program implementation support for each country selected.

  Upon completion of this assignment, the AFD was adequately informed and advised on how to successfully expand SUNREF to four target countries namely Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Namibia, under the most conducive framework for investing in sustainable-energy and environmental-performance projects through LFIs.