Japan to announce assistance to geothermal projects in Eastern Africa
Mitsubishi turbine at the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, Iceland (source: flickr/ ThinkGeoEnergy, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
30 May 2013
The Japanese government is about to announce financial support and technical assistance to geothermal energy development in countries of East Africa as part of a larger drive on supporting Japanese players investing into various industry sectors in Africa.
Reported by Japanese News outlet Nikkei, the Japanese government plans to provide assistance for geothermal power generation projects in Kenya, Tanzania and other parts of eastern Africa.
There is a great interest and lots of initial activities in Eastern Africa, predominantly in Kenya right now, but in general it has been rather slow.
Japan now plans to provide technical support to make geothermal development in the region commercially viable, hoping to help create projects worth more than 2 trillion yen ($19 billion) in Kenya alone.
The Japanese government is to unveil these plans as part of a larger package of assistance measures at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development scheduled for June 1-3 in Yokohama, Japan.
Japan’s total trade finance support facility for Africa, essentially money to be lend to Japanese companies investing in Africa, that will be announced at the TICAD conference is expected to be around $5 billion.
This money will be targeting a variety of African countries focusing on various industry sectors, and it seems like the main target for the power sector will be Kenya. In other countries of Africa, Japan is expected to support development in natural gas and coal mining (Mozambique), natural gas (Tanzania), oil (Angola and Nigeria), Power sector (Kenya and Egypt) and so on.
Source: Nikkei, Nipate.com via Bloomberg
