private investment

The fund has already started to deploy capital in support of this programme, including its first asset acquisitions in January 2023.

The total corporate funding into the global solar sector increased by 55% in Q1 2023 compared with Q4 2022, and 11% year-on-year compared with the same period in Q1 last year.

In January the South African government released an amendment to its energy action plan that lowered the local content requirements of solar modules deployed on government-backed schemes from 100% to 30%. The move was unsurprising to many, and may speak to the overwhelming rise of private projects in the country’s PV sector.

Higher interest rates in the second half of the year slowed down corporate funding in the global solar sector to US$24.1 billion in 2022, according to research from Mercom Capital Group.

The World Bank has approved US$165 million in additional financing to support 450MW of rooftop solar deployment in India and make distributed generation systems in the country more affordable.

New Zealand-based energy developer Helios Energy has unveiled a pipeline of 1GW of grid-connected solar projects to be developed in the country.

Solar energy leads global energy transition investments for 2020, rising by 12% to US$148.6 billion.

Online retail giant launches solar and wind projects in France, South Africa, Italy and Germany for the first time, bringing its total renewable capacity to 6.5GW.

Former raises €100m as it sells 50% stake to wealthy individuals while latter supplies €38m to refinance debt of 13.6MW portfolio

Whilst African solar is still firmly an emerging market, investors have confirmed that issues remain with development finance, insofar as it is holding back the market from truly taking off. Whilst development finance institutions (DFIs) are a crucial part of allowing the market to find its feet, the continent’s economic infrastructure needs to move beyond the realm of development finance for commercial financiers to be enticed.