ARC Power Rwanda

Project Description

On April, 8, 2024 MIGA issued guarantees to Triodos Groenfonds N.V. of The Netherlands; Triodos SICAV II of Luxembourg; and OIKOCREDIT, Ecumenical Development Cooperative Society U.A. of The Netherlands for their total US$9 million equity investments to ARC POWER RWANDA Limited of the Republic of Rwanda—against the risk of Breach of Contract for a period of up to 8 years each.

The Project includes: (i) the pre-financing, design, construction, commissioning, and short-term maintenance of medium (30 kV) and low voltage (0.5 kV) lines, transformers, and auxiliary components to interconnect approximately 150 villages in multiple locations around Rwanda to the national grid and where Rwanda Energy Group (REG), the public utility, will become the owner at construction completion; and (ii) the financing, design, construction, long-term ownership, operation, and maintenance of solar photovoltaic generation facilities that are located on the ground that will provide electricity directly to approximately 25 to 30 productive user customers, such as schools, health centers, local government offices, small and medium enterprises, commercial centers, and business parks.

Environmental Categorization

The Project is a category B under the MIGA’s Policy on Environmental and Social Sustainability. Click here to view the environmental and social review summary.

Development Impact

The Project is aligned with the country’s Least Cost Power Development Plan by significantly reducing the end-user tariffs since these end-user tariffs will be matched with the national grid tariff, which compares favorably to a typical captive solar mini-grid project with battery storage units in the country.

The project is expected to connect approximately 30,000 new customers to the Rwanda national grid, equating to around 118,000 people. The Project will be the first interconnected grid network project in the country that has solar generation units installed in the village networks, directly servicing the villages’ productive users and households. By providing the stable source of energy to the village productive users, this ARC Power project will contribute to increase their productivities. The project is also promoting the clean cooking solutions to the village people by distributing electric pressured cookers as well as cookbooks that elaborate about how to cook Rwandan food by using the electric pressured cookers. This will contribute to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by replacing wood and charcoal burning and will also has a significant positive impact on indoor-air pollution.