- Govt has ambitions of 100% energy access to all households by 2030
- Botswana has no access to IDA grants, loans
- Middle income status prevents Botswana from multilateral funding
BONGANI MALUNGA
The government is actively seeking foreign investment in order to fulfil its ambitions of 100 percent energy access to all households by 2030.
The high cost of capital needed to complete the project resulted in Botswana scoping a wide net of investors at the Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania last week.
Botswana’s 100 percent access ambitions are in line with Africa’s Mission 300 initiative which aims to connect 300 million people to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.
Extra funding
Speaking to the media while in Tanzania, the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Joy Kenewendo, stated that while Botswana is committed to advancing energy access for all households, extra funding is needed to accelerate the project.
Kenewendo said Botswana has to find investors since the country is not a part of the International Development Association (IDA) which offers loans and grants to the world’s poorest countries to finance major projects.
Botswana’s status as a middle-income economy inhibits the country from benefitting from the assistance of the World Bank’s soft lending branch.
“Our ambition is to ensure that we have 100 percent energy access (by all households) by 2030,” Minister Kenewendo told journalists in Dar.
High cost of capital
“What we wish to achieve here is to find partners, speak to investors, institutions or philanthropists who can help us achieve that.
“One of the issues that our stakeholders mentioned at home is the very high cost of capital, and we hope to address that since Botswana is not part of the IDA.
“We need to address how middle-income countries can still benefit from multilateral funding without being an IDA member through extra concessional lending because we are a high ambition country.”