Rwanda’s energy production got a boost on Sunday as an 8.5MW solar field valued at $23.7 million was inaugurated in Rwamagana, 60km from capital city, Kigali. The new field is East Africa’s first utility-scale solar energy project and the largest on the continent, outside of South Africa and Mauritius.
“What we can see up here today for Rwanda, Africa and the world is hope,” said Yosef Abramowitz, the American-Israeli co-founder and president of the Gigawatt Global Company, developer of the solar field.
The project was officially brought online at a ceremony earlier in February. It is made up of 28,360 photovoltaic panels on a 20-hectare plot of land, and supplies 6 percent of Rwanda’s power needs. It will do so by harnessing the sunlight for 25 years, according to the power purchase agreement.
“It’s a very good feeling to know that we put something on the ground,” Chaim Motzen, managing director and co-founder of Gigawatt Global, told The Jerusalem Post before the launch ceremony.
He noted that the new project was proof of the viability of financing and building large-scale solar fields in sub-Saharan Africa. He expressed hope that the field serves as a catalyst for many more sustainable energy projects in the region.
Motzen, who has been the driving force behind the project since it began, also described the project as very tangible and practical, with a significant impact on a country. “The speed with which this project was completed is a tribute to the strength of the Rwandan government’s institutions and their laser-focus on increasing Rwanda’s generation capacity as well as to the nimbleness of our team and partners which spanned eight countries.”
Rwanda has suffered from acute electricity supply shortage, leading to severe load shedding. Its installed generation capacity (mostly hydropower), has been constrained by regional drought. But with high solar irradiation in the East African country – between 4-6 kWh/m2/day – the latest development may therefore be a sign of better things to come for Rwanda, whose impressive growth has been partly stifled by its energy poverty. The country aims to connect half its population to electricity by 2017.
The plant was financed by a consortium of equity investors and debt providers, such as Norwegian development body, Norfund, and Dutch development bank, FMO. It also received grants from bodies funded by the United States and the United Kingdom governments, among others.
