WEST AFRICA – Energicity, a West African developer and operator of microgrid utilities, has raised US$3.25 million in a seed investment round to fund the expansion efforts in the region.

This round of funding- led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund (EIF), a sustainability-focused venture capital fund – follows an earlier investment by Treehouse Investments, which closed in November 2016.

Earlier this month, The Africa Power Journal published a new study titled Smart renewable electricity portfolios in West Africa which mapped the potential of solar-wind-water strategies for West Africa

According to the study, The potential for reliable, clean power generation based on solar and wind power, supported by flexibly dispatched hydropower, increases by more than 30% when countries can share their potential regionally.

All measures taken together would allow roughly 60% of the current electricity demand in West Africa to be met with complementary renewable sources, of which roughly half would be solar and wind power and the other half hydropower, the study explained.

Energicity Corp is present in several African rural communities with subsidiaries in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, currently serving 36 communities and 23,000 people.

Through its utility service, Energicity claimed to have sold over half a gigawatt hour of solar powered electricity to rural off grid customers.

The solar power company claims that it currently serves 25 health care facilities with reliable electricity and that its efforts have increased rural entrepreneurs’ incomes by an average of six times.

Energicity’s founder and CEO, Nicole Poindexter, while expressing her excitement of having EIF as a partner noted that “Energy access is a problem in Africa that we can solve in our lifetimes with innovative solutions like ours and bold, transformative investors”.

The International Energy Agency notes that Energy access is a critical market need in Africa, with over 600 million people without access to reliable or safe energy sources.

 Energicity city is thus working to provide solutions to this problem, one project at a time.

Through its subsidiaries Black Star Energy and Power Leone, Energicity has a 20-year concession in Sierra Leone to serve 100,000 people and has the largest private mini grid footprint in Ghana.

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