The Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) has approved US $ 995,000 grant to Asticom Kenya Ltd., to support the construction of a 10 megawatt (MW) grid-connected municipal waste-to-energy (WTE) plant which will generate electricity from municipal solid waste by converting them to biogas/ fuel ethanol. The grant will be funding the cost of conducting a full environmental and social impact assessment, detailed engineering designs, and provide project-related legal advisory services, as well as financial/transaction advisory services.
The project will be located in Kibera, a suburb of Nairobi. The planned diversion and use of municipal solid waste will have significant health, social and development outcomes. This will benefit the inhabitants of Kibera− a community that receives 1,000 tons of municipal solid waste daily from the Nairobi County. Therefore local dwellers will be contracted in the sorting of the municipal waste, thereby providing them with additional employment and income.
The project collaborates with the Bank’s High 5 development priorities and in particular, the agenda to Light up and Power Africa, the 10-Year Strategy, the Private Sector Development Strategy (2013-2017), the Energy Sector Policy 2012, and the New Deal on Energy for Africa . It is also in line with Kenya’s National Development Plan and the African Development Bank’s Country Strategy Paper (CSP) for Kenya, which prioritizes the ‘enabling of physical infrastructure to unleash inclusive growth.’
Launched in 2012, SEFA is a US $90-million multi-donor facility funded by the governments of Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States and Italy. It supports the sustainable energy agenda in Africa through grants to facilitate the preparation of medium-scale renewable energy generation and energy efficiency projects; equity investments to bridge the financing gap for small- and medium-scale renewable energy generation projects; and support to the public sector to improve the enabling environment for private investments in sustainable energy. SEFA is hosted by the Renewable Energy Department of the AfDB.
