The Africa Minigrids Program (AMP)

The Africa Minigrids Program (AMP) is a Country-led technical assistance program for minigrids. It is comprised of country-level interventions in an initial 21 countries in Africa and complemented by a ‘regional platform’ acting as the advocacy, coordination and knowledge management hub for the program.

Rationale for the AMP

While minigrids are a promising technology for reaching unelectrified populations, they are not yet commercially viable and not always competitive with respect to fossil-fuel alternatives. There isn’t sufficient investment, public or private (in particular), in minigrids today. The market remains nascent which means there still a learning curve ahead of us in terms of reducing investment and operation costs, but also bringing down financing costs driven by underlying risks facing minigrid investors. There are numerous actors proving support for minigrids in Africa, so this program has identified a niche or special focus around the reduction of minigrid costs.

With consideration of national context, in general the program has an intention to promote private sector models or private sector involvement of some sort in minigrid market development; the rationale for this is to enable further minigrid scale-up and being able to seize the potential that minigrids represent for rural electrification

Objective of the Program

Its objective is to support access to clean energy by increasing the financial viability, and promoting scaled-up commercial investment, in renewable energy minigrids in Africa, with a focus on cost-reduction levers and innovative business models. This will be achieved through

bringing scaled-up commercial investment in minigrids by increasing their commercial viability. The program also aims at lowering the costs for renewable energy minigrids and promote innovative business models, making minigrids more financially attractive, and in that way attracting commercial financing and investors into the sector.