Burkina Faso’s installed electricity capacity has increased by 26.6 MW. This is thanks to a new photovoltaic solar power plant that recently came on line in Zina, a village in the Mouhoun province. The announcement was made on the LinkedIn social network by Emirati independent power producer (IPP) Amea Power, which built the new power station under a public-private partnership (PPP) with the Burkina Faso government.
The 70-hectare solar park “will supply electricity to more than 43,000 people while offsetting 13,200 tonnes of CO2 per year”, according to Amea Power. To reach this stage of the project, the company headed by Hussain al-Nowais has contracted the debt with the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.
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The IFC-Canada Climate Change Program (IFCCCP) has also contributed to the financial closure of the Zina solar project in 2022. The new solar power plant is connected to the grid of the Burkina Faso National Electricity Company (SONABEL) under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA).
Through the special-purpose company Zina Solaire S.A., Amea Power joins other IPPs that own operational solar power plants in Burkina Faso. These include Madagascar’s Axian Group, which has just acquired the Nagréongo solar farm (30 MWp) from French IPP GreenYellow. There is also the French company Africa Ren, which operates a 38 MWp photovoltaic facility in Kodéni, near Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second largest city. With the Zina plant, the West African country now has an installed solar capacity of 182.6 MWp.
