Client:

KfW

Country:

Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda

Sponsors:

GreenMax Capital Group, Energy-4-Impact

Seed Funding:

Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 (P4G)

Year:

2020 – ongoing

Description:

GreenMax has launched G4A as a risk mitigation facility to encourage increased local currency financing of energy access projects by local financial institutions (FIs).To be initially capitalized at up to $50M, G4A has created a tiered fund structure in order to blend existing philanthropic and donor sources with capital from impact investors, DFIs and others. G4A’s inaugural product is a physical cash deposit fund (CDF) placed with local lenders to cover up to the first 20% of loss across a portfolio of energy access loans. G4A will support FI’s to provide direct consumer loans to PAYGO solar customers and quasi project finance structures for green mini-grid (GMG) portfolios. The GMG’s will be financed on a portfolio basis through an AssetCo model, where the developer transfers the projects to an SPV while continuing to provide operational services. 

A pilot phase covering loan portfolios for the purchase of PUE equipment by SMEs, smallholder farms and households in Uganda and Nigeria has been launched with seed funding from the IKEA Foundation and operational support from CLASP.  A full first close is expected in Q1 2024 to allow for expansion to Kenya, Tanzania,  Malawi and other countries still to-be-determined.

The G4A planning stage was supported with a grant from the Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 (P4G) program. In 2022, G4A was awarded the Keeling Curve Prize in the category of finance by the Global Warming Mitigation Project.

More information about the G4A First Loss Facility is available here.

G4A Business Development Director, Sunkanmi Olowo, presents the G4A Facility at the Global Off-Grid Solar Forum and Expo in Kigali, Rwanda, October 2022.

GreenMax President, Clifford J. Aron, presents the G4A Facility at the 2019 AIX Power Renewables Conference in London.