Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone and South Africa will benefit from a $1 million technical assistance grant from the African Development Bank (AfDB).
A press release by the AfDB said the grant will support private investment in sustainable transport in the highlighted countries.
Do note that the technical assistance grant is being issued by the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) of the African Development Bank Group via the Green Mobility Facility for Africa (GMFA).
What the grant is expected to achieve: GMFA provides technical assistance and investment capital to accelerate and expand private sector investments in sustainable transport solutions.
Meanwhile, the SEFA will support the creation of an enabling environment for electric vehicles (EVs), the design of EV business models, guidelines for the public and private sectors, the development of a bankable pipeline of e-mobility projects, regional coordination, and knowledge-sharing amongst other upstream activities to help catalyze follow-on private sector financing during the subsequent investment phase of the GMFA.
Nigeria’s budding mobility industry: Nigeria’s mobility industry is currently in need of investments. However, the country is not lacking in innovators, who are working to ensure the country is placed on a path to sustainability. Nigeria’s over-reliance on fossil fuels has continued to create opportunities for Nigerians to migrate to sustainable options. However, power supply challenges have hindered many from adopting green mobility options.
In January 2023, Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo said it was time for Nigeria to create opportunities for electric vehicle (EV) development, to reduce carbon emissions. Punch Newspaper quoted him to have said:
- “We will be considering the decommissioning of generators, development of cooking stoves, think through options such as electric cars; is it the right time? What about charging stations? These are some of the things we have to start thinking about.”
Prior to that, the Federal Government had introduced the Kona Electric vehicle to the Nigerian market in June 2021.
However, a lot still needs to be done in terms of awareness, affordability and investments for the development of needed infrastructure. In September 2022, the Director General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Jelani Aliyu, told Nairametrics that affordability and infrastructure are still an issue in Nigeria’s EV adoption.
For the record: For Nigeria to actively partake in the global electric vehicle market, the Nigerian government must partner with investors in the sector to fund infrastructure projects such as charging stations, stable power supply in charging stations, and maintenance facilities.
- To get a sense of how much investment is required for charging stations, the European Union currently has nearly 275,000 EV charging ports, according to data by the European Alternative Fuels Observatory, or around 62 charging points per 100,000 inhabitants.
