Green-For-Access First Loss Facility (G4A)

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The Green-for-Access First Loss Facility (G4A) is a risk-mitigation fund that partners with local financial institutions across Africa to facilitate local-currency lending directly to consumers for the purchase of Productive Use of Energy (PUE) appliances and Electric Vehicles (EVs). G4A uses a tiered fund structure that blends grant funds in the first-loss tranche of the capital stack with private philanthropic and impact-oriented junior debt in the middle tranche, followed by senior loans from DFIs in the upper tranches.

G4A offers two products:

  1. For Commercial Banks: a physical cash-deposit fund placed with local lenders to cover up to the first 20% of losses across a portfolio of PUE and EV loans.
  2. For Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs): a junior loan totaling 20% of portfolio value, with a forgiveness feature that effectively covers the first 20% of portfolio losses.

G4A is structured as a USD 50M closed-end fund, designed to leverage nearly USD 1 billion in energy-access investment.

Now completing its pilot phase with support from the IKEA Foundation and CLASP, G4A has active portfolios with three local lenders in Nigeria and Kenya:

  • Fortune Credit, a leading woman-owned Kenyan microfinance institution, is offering the lowest lending rates in East Africa for e-motorbikes, e-bicycles, solar refrigerators, solar water pumps, and solar grain mills.
  • Moja EV Leasing, a Chinese-owned e-mobility vendor operating in Kenya, is offering attractive leasing rates for Neta EVs to Uber and Bolt drivers.
  • LAPO Microfinance Bank in Nigeria is financing solar gensets and solar refrigerators.

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

More information about G4A is available here.

CONTACT: For any inquiries related to G4A, please contact the following members of our team: