- Kenya’s president, William Ruto, and high profile delegates from the UAE joined to convene African Heads of State and other prominent personalities in a landmark event at COP28.
- Ruto launched the ‘Africa Green Industrialisation Initiative’ at the event, which aims to accelerate and scale green industries and businesses across Africa, promote climate mitigation and adaptation, and catalyse economic green growth on the continent.
The event was attended by the Heads of State for Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia, the Vice President of Cote d’Ivoire; COP28 President Dr Sultan Al Jaber and CEO Adnan Amin; Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, the UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt; Principals from leading green developers as well as industry, multilateral development banks, and key institutions from across the UAE and Africa.
The ‘Africa Green Industrialisation Initiative’ aims to create and implement a new economic narrative for the continent and its role in global trade, develop a full value-chain of activities and sectors to drive continent’s green industrialisation, and launch regional partnerships and consortium of collaborations to implement it.
In his remarks, President Ruto underscored that “the initiative marks a concrete step toward the realisation of the Nairobi Declaration, activating private sector-led scaling-up of green industrial clusters.”
More than $4 billion in deals of new geothermal development or projects which will make use of geothermal resources in Kenya were announced. They include:
- $1.5 billion for a green fertilizer project with Australian firm Fortescue Future Industries (FFI);
- $1 billion for the Suswa geothermal project with the Indonesian project backed by Pertamina Geothermal Energy with the support of UAE-base Masdar;
- $800 million for the Paka geothermal project by UAE-based AMEA Power and the Geothermal Development Company;
- $110 million for the 35-MW geothermal power plant of Globeleq in Menengai;
- $600 million for a data center in Olkaria followed by geothermal energy in partnership with EcoCloud.
- $270 million for a sustainable agricultural project on 15,000 hectares in the Lake Basin region by United Green and Kenya Development Corp;
- $568 million loan to launch a Clean Energy Supply Chain expansion initiative to support clean energy initiatives in developing countries with the United States, Brazil, and India.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
