20 January 2022: The Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE) and Power Africa has entered a new partnership to collaborate on the objectives of Power Africa to add 30,000 megawatts of installed generation capacity and 60 million new home and business connections in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as ARE’s recently launched Energy Compact pledging to enable the private sector to deliver sustainable electricity services to at least 500 million additional people, catalyse the creation of at least 5 million green jobs, and avoid at least 1 billion tonnes of CO2e emissions by 2030.

In this regard, ARE and Power Africa will collaborate to facilitate networking opportunities, capacity building, market intelligence, development of knowledge products and guidelines and/or technical assistance to increase the adoption of decentralised renewable energy (DRE) in Sub-Saharan Africa. This in turn will enable clean, reliable and affordable electricity generation for households, essential services and businesses, as well as help unlock the necessary financial resources for the DRE market to expand.

David Lecoque, CEO of ARE underlined that: “We are thrilled to partner with Power Africa and look forward to collaborating to advance electricity access and sustainable development through DRE in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the objectives of Power Africa correspond to the goals of ARE squarely, this partnership is in line with our work towards reaching SDG-7 by 2030.”

Mark Carrato, Coordinator, Power Africa said that: “The partnership with ARE reinforces our shared commitments to increase access to clean, reliable and affordable energy and advance the productive use of renewable energy.  We look forward to working with ARE to increase the adoption of decentralised renewable energy which is so critical to achieving renewable energy targets in Sub-Saharan Africa and globally.”