The International Finance Corporation (IFC), with support from the Canadian government, has made a $5 million investment in Husk Nigeria to enhance the deployment of solar hybrid mini grids to underserved communities in Northern Nigeria.
The financing, which was announced on Thursday in a statement, is intended to expand access to affordable, reliable, and renewable electricity in off-grid areas, which still remained one of Nigeria’s biggest hurdles in attempts by the governments to extend power supply to rural communities.
According to the details of the investment package, the facility will help build and run as many as 108 mini-grid sites by Husk, possibly connecting around 115,000 individuals and businesses with approximately 28,750 new electricity connections.
The statement indicated that the $5 million facility remained the first investment under the IFC Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) Platform, a $200 million debt facility that was signed in November 2024.
Specifically, the DARES Platform seeks to catalyze private-sector solutions for expanding electricity access throughout West and Central Africa.
In addition, the platform is a complementary adjunct to the World Bank-financed Nigeria DARES Project, which has an approved budget of $750 million and was launched in December 2023, with the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) as the implementing agency.
Both have been synchronized for targeted interventions to provide new or improved energy access through decentralized renewable energy (DRE) solutions to over 17.5 million Nigerians.
The IFC disclosed that the Husk project had an overall cost of around $25 million and that the $5 million financing package included a senior loan of $2.5 million from IFC’s account and a concessional subordinated loan of $2.5 million from the Canada-IFC Renewable Energy Programme for Africa.
The corporation clarified that the facility was structured as a revolving loan, allowing Husk to repay and redraw funds multiple times during the project’s implementation.
Speaking on the funding initiative, Regional Vice President for Africa at the IFC, Ethiopis Tafara, described the development as an innovative approach to tackling one of Africa’s most pressing challenges—energy access.
He said: “By partnering with Husk, a leading renewable energy developer globally, through the first project under the DARES Platform, we are not only addressing the immediate electricity needs of underserved communities in Nigeria but also laying the foundation for a scalable model that can be replicated across the continent.”
In his remarks, Co-founder and CEO of Husk, Manoj Sinha, said that the “innovative debt facility remained exactly what the minigrid industry needs to scale — blended, long-term and affordable capital.”
Also commenting on the funding support, Country Director, Husk Nigeria, Olu Aruike, explained that “adding 108 new communities to our minigrid portfolio with IFC support is an important step toward our goal of deploying at least 250MW of decentralised renewable energy projects in Nigeria.”
It is noteworthy that the DARES Platform is a part of the World Bank’s comprehensive, programmatic intervention in Nigeria’s power sector designed to help the government achieve its Energy Transition Plan (ETP) vision.
The project aims to increase access to electricity services for households and Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through private sector-led generated and distributed renewable energy.
