Financing Green Growth in the Lake Victoria Basin
NDF Board approved EUR 4 million in financing to the Lake Victoria Basin Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production project during its latest meeting in Helsinki.
The latest project approved by the NDF Board reinforces NDF’s commitment to supporting private sector-led green growth in the East Africa region. It is a co-finance initiative with the World Bank and implemented through a network of National Cleaner Production Centres, one each in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
The aim of the project is to catalyse investments by private firms doing business in the Lake Victoria Basin in cleaner and more efficient industrial production and supply chains.
NDF Country Program Manager, Charles Wetherill, commented following the Board approval, “the project links well with other NDF financing in the region and positions NDF as a rising partner for green growth and climate resilience within the East African Community.”
The project will support firms and industries with awareness raising, training and in-plant assessments. In-plant assessments will deliver recommendations to firms for cutting costs of production and improving efficiencies in key areas, notably energy and water usage.
“Companies in the region regularly face grid interruption which causes halts in production,” added Wetherill. “It’s a question of awareness. Many just aren’t aware that renewable energy solutions like rooftop solar for self-supply are accessible and can be brought in quickly at favourable cost and can immediately mitigate production risk from the grid and reduce fuel costs on back-up generators, not to mention, reducing fossil fuel emissions at the same time.”
Resource efficiency and cleaner productions activities piloted previously in the Lake Victoria Basin region led to over USD 80 million in direct follow on investments by private firms in upgrades to systems, processes and technologies. These investments resulted in savings to the firms, improvements in water management and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The aim for the new project is to build awareness around the successes to date and scale up the reach and leverage of the project with new partners in new value chains.
