NEWS

British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor, and Odyssey Energy Solutions, a technology company accelerating distributed energy in emerging markets, have launched a new financing facility to support the rollout out of electricity mini-grids for families and businesses across Nigeria.

With $7.5 million funding from BII, the facility leverages Odyssey’s proprietary procurement platform and supply chain credit solution to support mini-grid developers. The finance will be deployed to support Nigeria’s DARES program, backed by the World Bank, which aims to improve energy access for 17.5 million Nigerians.

Specifically, Odyssey works to bridge the gap between commitment and disbursement of DARES connections-based subsidies by addressing the financing bottleneck of upfront costs such as acquiring equipment and import duties.

This provides some key benefits for Nigerian solar companies including:

• Competitive pricing, through aggregated procurement
• Flexible payments, improving working capital
• Faster procurement cycles, accelerating deployment timelines
• End-to-end logistics support, from customs to last-mile delivery
• High-quality, vetted equipment, ensuring system reliability
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This new facility comes at a critical time, as Nigeria ramps up its mini-grid ambitions under the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-Up (DARES) program, backed by the World Bank. With DARES endeavoring to improve energy access for 17.5 million Nigerians, the demand for streamlined procurement and innovative financing is more urgent than ever.

The new facility has the potential of scaling up to meet the demand generated by the DARES program by partnering with a growing network of qualified developers and suppliers to accelerate project execution and reduce time to electrification.