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ECREEE – Praia, – 24th June 2021 – The government of Togo has recently inaugurated a 50-megawatt state-of-the-art solar plant as part of efforts to reduce the country’s dependency on fossil fuel. The facility dubbed Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed solar power plant is the country’s maiden renewable energy facility and one of the largest solar plants in West Africa. The project was funded under the IRENA-ADFD Project.
IRENA is the lead intergovernmental agency for the global energy transformation that supports countries in their transition to a sustainable energy future, and serves as the principal platform for international co-operation, a centre of excellence, and a repository of policy, technology, resource and financial knowledge on renewable energy.
According to stakeholders in renewable energy, the project is just one example of ADFD and IRENA’s support for the development of Africa’s renewable energy sector. In 2020, ADFD signed loan agreements worth US$33million with the governments of Togo, Niger and Liberia on the sidelines of the IRENA Assembly held in Abu Dhabi. .
IRENA-ADFD renewable energy projects include wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass and their projects span across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Small Island Developing States. ADFD and IRENA jointly supported the development of 26 clean energy projects in 21 countries, with generating capacity of 245 megawatts to fuel the needs of more than 4.5 million households and businesses. .
The new plant has the capacity to provide clean and reliable electricity supply to nearly 160,000 homes and small businesses in Togo, as well as boost the country’s efforts towards increasing the shares of renewable in electrification to 50 per cent by 2025 and 100 per cent by 2030. Togo has a population of about 8.2 million people, who traditionally rely on biomass as the dominant source of energy.
The officials of the Togolese government, IRENA and ADFD all described the project as highly significant not just for Togo but for the whole of West Africa. They noted that the new solar plant will create job opportunities, as well as go a long way in combating environmental pollution and mitigating climate change by extension. The project has created more than 700 local jobs during the construction phase and a further 120 direct and indirect jobs during operation.