12.06.2025 | News
The Annual Results Report of the Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa (BGFA) programme in 2024 shows successful progress of the programme implementation. In total, over 610,000 energy connections had been established by year end, impacting a total of 3.15 million lives and benefitting almost 5,000 African businesses across five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2024, the implementation of the BGFA programme advanced well, despite challenging circumstances in several BGFA countries. During 2024, the BGFA programme provided 370,000 new energy connections – typically small solar home systems – bringing total subscriptions to over 610,000 by the end of the year. In total, the established energy connections have brought electricity to 3.15 million people so far and supported approx. 5,000 African businesses, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises. BGFA has also created over 12,700 sales agent positions, generated 25,700 MWh of clean electricity, and avoided approx. 66,000 tonnes of CO2e emissions.
“BGFA continues to exemplify the transformative power of results-based financing in the African off-grid solar sector. In 2024, despite significant challenges, BGFA advanced its mission to expand renewable energy access, showcasing the resilience and innovation of its investees. Nefco’s role as implementer has been vital in managing and driving the programme’s success. The contributions of our donors – Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Sweden – remain critical to achieving BGFA’s objectives. This collaboration underpins our efforts to illuminate the path to a sustainable energy future for Africa,” comments Adam Öjdahl, Chair of the BGFA Steering Committee.
The BGFA programme had built a project portfolio of 30 companies by the end of 2024, with 5 additional companies being contracted during the year, to which it has committed a total of EUR 66 million in results-based financing for the establishment of a total of 1.7 million energy service subscriptions (the programme target) by 2029. BGFA investees are seeking to mobilise at least a similar amount of additional funding for the projects as that committed from BGFA at the end of each project implementation.
In total, 8.7 million people are expected to receive access to clean energy solutions once the projects are implemented in rural areas of Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Uganda and Zambia. The first projects in Mozambique are planned to be contracted during 2025.
BGFA’s institutional work also advanced well during 2024 with institutional platforms functional now in all six programme countries. The institutional support activities are bringing all key stakeholders together to coordinate activities, to share both challenges and opportunities, and to agree on priorities for actions to strengthen the off-grid market environment in each country.
“Despite a challenging year in the off-grid sector and in many of the BGFA countries, we managed to achieve strong impact results together with our investees and with support from our programme implementation partners. Our main aim is to strike a balance between achieving numerical targets and fostering long-term sustainability and off-grid market development also by supporting number of smaller, local businesses in our portfolio,” comments Kari Hämekoski, Fund Manager of BGFA at Nefco.
For further information about the Annual Results Report 2024:
Visit beyondthegrid.africa and read the Annual Results Report 2024
Download the report for printing
For further information, please contact:
Kari Hämekoski, Fund Manager of BGFA and Senior Programme Manager at Nefco
kari.hamekoski@nefco.int, +358 10 618 0660
Petra Mikkolainen, Senior Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Manager at Nefco
petra.mikkolainen@nefco.int, +358 10 618 0588
Lia Oker-Blom, Senior Communications Officer at Nefco
lia.oker-blom@nefco.int, +358 10 618 0671
About BGFA
The Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa (BGFA) is a multi-donor facility established and managed by Nefco – the Nordic Green Bank. Nefco is an international financial institution based in Helsinki, Finland, focusing on environmental and climate investments and fund management. BGFA is implemented by Nefco, with the support of two project implementation partners: NIRAS, a development and engineering consultancy company headquartered in Denmark, and the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), an international multilateral partnership based in Vienna, Austria.
The current EUR 110+ million BGFA programme was established in 2019 on Sweden’s initiative through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). It has since been developed by Nefco into a multi-donor programme funded by Denmark through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Germany through its development bank KfW, Norway through the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation Norad and Sweden. Read more at www.beyondthegrid.africa
Photo: BGFA investee workers in Zambia – Jason Mulikita for BGFA / Nefco