APRA at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2025
The Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Africa (APRA) actively engaged at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2025 (BETD), to prominently place Africa’s renewable energy agenda at the forefront of global energy transition discussions.
Through two focused events – “Enabling Africa’s Energy Transition through Public Commitment” and “Private Investment and Accelerating the Energy Transition and De-risking Investments” – APRA countries, institutional partners, investors, and development institutions came together to explore concrete investment opportunities, address investment challenges, and drive strategic cooperation to accelerate the continent’s energy transition.
Enabling Africa’s Energy Transition through Public Commitment and Private Investment
Date: 17 March 2025
On the sidelines of the BETD 2025, the workshop was organized during the German-African Energy Forum on March 17th, 2025. The closed-door event gathered senior representatives from APRA countries, partners, IRENA, UNOPS, senior executives from German companies, investors and financiers from APRA partner countries, all demonstrating strong interest in renewable energy investment opportunities across Africa.
The meeting took note of an update on APRA and its priority projects, discussed current opportunities and bottlenecks for renewable energy investments in APRA countries, and connected private investors and companies with senior representatives from APRA countries. During the session, IRENA and Get.invest presented an overview of the current pipeline of projects in APRA countries, highlighting key challenges faced during the project development process.
The meeting also presented an opportunity for government and private actors to identify concrete avenues for collaboration through APRA towards the achievement of national renewable energy ambitions. Representatives from APRA countries highlighted current strategic investment opportunities in their countries as well as initiatives underway to foster a more conducive environment for increased private sector involvement.
Key highlights included the importance of aggregating smaller projects to create larger, more attractive investment opportunities, optimizing transactions costs and maximising impact. Investors also underscored the need to shift perceptions of risk in Africa, noting that actual investment risks are often lower than commonly perceived. The meeting also called upon the design of risk mitigation instruments that are better suited to specific national markets, while also looking into climate finance opportunities and local capital to boost investments.
The outputs of this workshop will feed in the efforts being deployed by APRA stakeholders to catalyze private sector participation in APRA countries in line with national priorities.
Accelerating the Energy Transition and De-risking Investments
Date: 18 March 2025
On the opening day of the BETD 2025, a high-level roundtable was organized by IRENA and the Green Guarantee Group (GGG) to discuss the potential for unlocking renewable energy investments in APRA countries through the mobilization and leverage of private capital with blended-finance, public finance by multilateral development banks with a strong emphasis on risk mitigation instruments.
The meeting included high-level representation from APRA (Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe) and partner countries (Denmark and Germany) as well as the GGG, the Emerging Market Climate Action Fund (EMCAF), the African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM) as well as KfW and the European Investment Bank.
Ms. Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Policy at the Federal Foreign Office, who opened the meeting reiterated the support Germany has been providing towards the implementation of APRA on technical assistance and the creation of enabling frameworks for renewable energy investments in Africa and in APRA countries. However, she highlighted the difficulties still being faced by projects at development stage due to guarantee requirements. To that effect, she announced a contribution of EUR 20 million for guarantees under EMCAF to leverage EUR 40m of private equity investments in Sub-Saharan Africa and APRA countries.
During their interventions, APRA countries acknowledged the ongoing efforts to enhance the availability of risk mitigation instruments while noting the persisting challenges in terms of energy access and infrastructure. They highlighted national initiatives aimed at addressing these challenges, such as the finalization of new mini-grid regulations in Sierra Leone, amendments to Zimbabwe’s Finance Act to leverage critical materials for infrastructure growth, Kenya’s initiatives to promote green industrialization, and Ghana’s establishment of the Renewable Energy Authority.
The countries also emphasized the importance of partnerships in developing and implementing NDC 3.0, highlighted the significant potential of regional power interconnections within and across African regional power pools, and underscored the need to promote local content in Africa’s renewable energy sector.