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Norfund Eyes West Africa Expansion With Ghana Investments

Norfund Eyes West Africa Expansion With Ghana Investments

According to a Bloomberg report, the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries, a state-owned company popularly known as Norfund, is planning to enter the West African financial services and clean-energy market through investment in Ghana.

The fund, backed by the government of the oil-rich European country, had invested over $700 million in Southern and Eastern Africa. The fund has a $1.5 billion portfolio focused on the continent.

Norfund develops power projects in partnership with private investors, like Kenya’s 310 megawatt Lake Turkana wind power park, which will be the biggest wind park in Africa when completed in 2016, Business Daily reported.

Deepark Malik, who head the fund’s in Johannesburg office, told Bloomberg the fund has “reached a stage of maturity” and was now looking to expand to other parts of Africa.

Norfund
African countries where Norfund has investments (image: norfund.no)

The fund,which started trawling for opportunity in West Africa since mid last year, is considering setting up its fourth office on the continent in Ghana. It has other office in South Africa, Mozambique and Kenya.

“We are more familiar with English speaking west Africa so we have initially decided to start with Ghana and maybe go on to Nigeria,” Malik said.

Despite the tough economic time many sub-Saharan Africa countries are facing due to the slump in commodity prices, the continent’s main source of revenue, Norfund plans to double or even triple its investment in the region power sector by 2020.

Norfund is developing hydropower in sub-Saharan Africa in partnership with Norway’s power group Statkraft and has teamed up with Britain’s development fund CDC to invest in Globeleq Africa, a power company with an ambition to add 5,000 megawatts of new capacity.

“We expect to double or even to triple the capital invested in Africa by 2020, depending on the projects,” Kjell Roland, managing director of Norfund, told a conference in Oslo in April last year.