South Africa’s SolarAfrica and Nigeria’s Starsight Energy will invest in a 1 gigawatt solar farm in South Africa, Damilola Agbaje, investment director at shareholder African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), tells The Africa Report.
SolarAfrica and Starsight Energy are in the process of merging to create a pan-African solar power supplier. AIIM, which has $2.4bn under management, is part of Old Mutual Alternative Investments and manages private-equity African infrastructure funds.
It first invested in Starsight in 2018 and is now contributing $73m through its IDEAS Fund to accelerate the growth of the new company.
Nigeria’s Starsight, South Africa’s SolarAfrica merge to scale up African renewablesThe main use of that money will be to build a new solar farm at De Aar in Northern Cape province, Agbaje says, declining to give an exact figure.
Power from the farm will be transmitted across South Africa’s grid to commercial and industrial (C&I) customers, displacing the use of dirtier fuels such as coal, Agbaje says.