Mai-Ndombe

Mongala

Nord-Kivu

Nord-Ubangi

Sankuru

Sud-Kivu

Kongo Central

Sud-Ubangi

Bas-Uélé

Tanganyika

Équateur

Tshopo

Haut-Katanga

Tshuapa

Haut-Lomami

Haut-Uélé

Ituri

Kasaï Central

Kasaï Oriental

Kwango

Kwilu

Kinshasa

Kasaï

Lomami

Lualaba

Maniema

Congo, The Democratic Republic of the

Democratic Republic of Congo

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Eastern and Southern Africa are highly vulnerable to climate change, facing recurrent droughts, floods, heatwaves, and increasingly erratic rainfall that intensify water stress and land degradation. These climate stresses are compounded by rapid population growth, projected to rise from around 749 million in 2023 to nearly 964 million by 2050, placing growing pressure on already overstretched infrastructure. In 2023, around 365 million people lacked access to electricity and 580 million lacked access to clean cooking, severely constraining adaptation, productivity, and health outcomes across the region.

The ASCENT-GREEN project  aims to support climate-vulnerable communities across 21 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa by catalysing private-sector delivery of distributed renewable energy, clean cooking, and productive-use energy. It seeks to increase climate resilience, drive economic development, and reduce emissions across some of the region's most remote and fragile contexts.

Structured around three components, the project will establish a regional energy access financing facility providing affordable lending, results-based financing, and technical assistance, prioritizing rural households, fragile, conflict-affected populations, small and medium-sized enterprises and women-owned enterprises; develop regional de-risking facilities including a risk-sharing facility and a carbon risk mitigation facility to crowd in private capital; and establish a Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)-led regional platform to coordinate policy, technical assistance, and knowledge sharing across participating countries.

Through financing instruments that address barriers such as affordability, risk perception, and scaling up, the project will mobilise significantly larger private flows and accelerate market transformations, enabling far greater reach. It is expected to directly benefit 28.8 million people and indirectly reach a further 13.8 million, supporting improved access to energy services and enhanced resilience across participating countries.

Despite being among the lowest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), countries in sub-Saharan Africa have already experienced widespread loss and damage due to climate change. These impacts range from biodiversity loss to water shortages and reduced food production leading to slower economic growth. In some countries, energy is still dominated by fossil fuels, especially in off-grid rural areas where energy production relies heavily on biomass and diesel generation. Without improving their adaptation capacity, the impacts from climate change are expected to further harm rural livelihoods in these countries. 

The REPP 2 program will deliver climate impact by leveraging private sector funding to promote investments in small-scale renewable energy projects in nine sub-Saharan countries, seven of which are classified as least developed. The project will help address the current limited investor appetite and market barriers in the sub-Saharan region by providing blended finance to support smaller-scale renewable energy projects thereby bolstering the climate resilience of both small businesses and households. The project is expected to improve access to clean energy for more than 7.7 million people in some of sub-Saharan Africa’s hardest-to-reach regions. It will also strengthen the capacities of local developers in environmental, social, governance and financial structuring to attract investments from both concessional and commercial sources.

The African continent collectively contributes only about 3% of the yearly global human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the region is projected to experience more severe impacts from human-induced climate change than almost anywhere else on the planet. Sub-Saharan countries face temperature increases above that of the global average potentially impacting health, agriculture, food security, economic development and human welfare in a region that is already challenged on most of these issues. Solving the problem of climate change will require substantial investments in Africa’s infrastructure, manufacturing capacity and economy to bolster overall adaptation and mitigation levels on the continent.  

The KawiSafi II project will create a USD 200 million venture equity fund aimed at closing the investment gap in three key areas where sub-Saharan countries struggle to find investors:  energy transition, productivity, and mobility & logistics. Standing on the shoulders of the first KawiSafi project, the fund will invest in local enterprises developing scalable climate action projects to the benefit of climate-endangered African communities. Beyond funding, KawiSafi II will establish a USD 10 million technical assistance facility to enable these entities to maximise their climate impact while ensuring the implementation of robust management systems to address any potential environmental, social and governance risks that may arise.

560 million people in the sub-Saharan region live without electricity and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future without adequate intervention. Investment barriers such as risky and nascent market, hard-to-reach locality, and lack of supporting infrastructure keep traditional off-grid solar companies from investing in projects that could benefit hard-to-reach communities. The unelectrified communities of these countries risk being trapped in energy poverty and climate vulnerability. Delivering clean, affordable, and climate-resilient energy to these vulnerable communities will be a crucial component of climate action not only in the sub-Saharan region, but for the African continent.

The H2R programme aims to provide affordable and green energy access to first-time users in low-income populations in 17 countries in Africa. The programme will support off-grid solar companies to enter and grow in these underserved markets by providing flexible financing that matches the needs of the companies. The programme seeks to mobilise a blend of donor and private finance to deliver off-grid solar solutions to least developed communities via pay-as-you-go financing methods. The goal is to close a historically persistent energy gap in sub-Saharan countries, thereby contributing to a more just and inclusive energy systems transition.

Technical assistance through the GCF Project Preparation Facility (PPF) was deployed to support the Accredited Entity in the development of this project's funding proposal (FP).

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