The Energy Transition Office in Nigeria and the African Development Bank (AfDB) will partner on an intervention programme to address issues in the country’s electricity sector.
The Office announced on social media on Friday, October 13, that it had met with the international AfDB mission to Nigeria led by Henry Paul Batchi Baldeh (AfDB Director: Power Systems Development) to discuss a $1 billion power policy intervention.
The intervention is aimed at:
The parties also discussed a clean cooking initiative and the proposed roll out of an electric bus mass transit.
“We are excited about this partnership and we are looking forward to greater collaboration with the bank,” the Office said.
In September, Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, confirmed that the Bank will fund the Nigerian Electrification Project (NEP) to the tune of $250 million.
On X (formerly Twitter), Adelabu said: “This initiative aims to establish operational capacity across the entire value chain, facilitating project prioritisation.
“AfDB also confirmed readiness to disburse a previously approved $250 million fund for the Nigeria Electrification Project under the Rural Electrification Agency and extended support to Northern Nigerian states through the $20 billion 10,000MW Northern Africa Desert to Power fund.”
Electricity issues rife in Nigeria
In September, Nigeria suffered what some of the country’s electricity distributors called a “total grid collapse.”
It was the most serious outage for the West African country in 2023. Nigeria’s grid collapsed at least four times in 2022, with authorities blaming it on technical problems.
The AfDB and Nigeria Energy Transition Office partnership is looking to shore up the electricity sector through the strengthening of infrastructure.
The most recent data from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), showed that total electricity customer numbers in Q2 2023 stood at 11.47 million from 11.27 million in Q1 2023, showing an increase of 1.84%.
According to the US International Trade Administration, Nigeria will need substantial additional generation capacity to meet demands through 2030.
