IFC leads EUR303m financing package for the Atinkou Power Plant in Côte d’Ivoire

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, today announced the signing of a EUR303 million (US$334.12 million) financing package for a new gas-fired power project in Côte d’Ivoire. The new plant – called Atinkou – will boost power generation and supply in a country, where, as of 2017, only 66 percent of the population had access to electricity. The total cost of the project is EUR404 million (US$445.5 million).

The Project consists of a 20-year concession to develop and operate a 390MW natural gas-fired power plant located about 40 kilometers west of Abidjan. By using highly efficient combined-cycle turbine technology, the plant will substantially contribute to reducing Côte d’Ivoire’s generation costs and GHG emissions, in part, through the displacement of older generation units. The sponsor of the project is the Eranove Group, a leading industrial group that manages a number of water and electricity assets in West and Central Africa. Eranove also owns and operates the 544 MW CIPREL project, the largest power plant in Côte d’Ivoire.

As Lead Arranger and Global Coordinator, IFC arranged the full debt financing package of EUR 303 million, which, beyond IFC, was provided by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO, Germany’s Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG), the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund, which is part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group, and the OPEC Fund for International Development (OPEC Fund). In addition to mobilizing the debt, IFC is providing, as part of the debt package, a EUR 91 million (US$99.79 million) loan for its own account, as well as interest rate swaps to hedge the project’s interest rate risk.