The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has launched the distributed renewable energy and clean cooking Project Preparation Facility (PPF), with support from the World Bank.
The PPF is part of the regional Acceleration of Sustainable and Clean Energy Access Transformation (ASCENT) program, a USD 5 billion initiative aimed at providing electricity to 100 million people across Eastern and Southern Africa.
The facility will help governments and private sector players develop bankable, investment-ready energy projects through a demand-driven approach.
Speaking at the Alliance for Rural Electrification Energy (ARE) Access Investment Forum 2026, COMESA Assistant Secretary General Amb. Dr. Mohammed Kadah said millions in the region still lack reliable electricity, while many households rely on traditional biomass for cooking, posing health and environmental risks.
He noted that while solutions such as distributed renewable energy and clean cooking technologies exist, many projects fail to reach bankability due to gaps in project preparation, including technical structuring, financial modeling, and risk allocation.
The PPF aims to address these gaps by supporting project preparation and structuring to meet the standards required by public and private financiers, including development finance institutions and commercial investors.
Dr. Kadah said the facility marks a significant step toward overcoming key barriers to energy access by building a pipeline of bankable projects capable of attracting private investment and delivering impact at scale.
He called on governments, developers, financial institutions, and development partners to collaborate in creating an enabling environment and scaling up investment-ready energy projects across the region.
ASCENT project technical manager Ahid Maeresera said that mostly small companies lack capacity to do project preparation in terms of environmental and social, which is the climate dimension and thus they are the ones who will benefit from PPF project, especially when they fail to get financing from the financing institutions
“Smaller companies are the ones that are failing to get financing because they can’t do project preparation, be it legal component, be it environmental and social, financial (0:53) structuring and financial modelling. We want to help those companies,” he explained.
The financing from the World Bank, Maeresera said, can be given to the companies or through the banks, and if there is a gap and need, they can allocate experts to provide technical assistance.
The World Bank support through International Development Association (IDA) that grants the world’s low-income countries with low-interest loans to improve lives, and create safer, more prosperous communities around the world will assist in the ASCENT programme while other entities will leverage and come up with the extra USD 10 billion to make a package of USD 15 billion.
By Wangari Ndirangu
