IFC to assist Afghanistan launch its 40 MW solar tender

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, will help Afghanistan’s government to tender a 40 MW solar power project. According to the IFC, the project will be developed in public-private partnership mode. The costs  of IFC’s activities related to the photovoltaic (PV) project will be covered by the UK Department for International Development through DevCo, a multi-donor facility affiliated with the Private Infrastructure Development Group, and led by the Global Infrastructure Facility. The project is part of Afghanistan’s plan to deploy around 2 GW of solar to increase access to power in the country. Currently, only about 28 per cent of Afghanistan’s population is connected to the grid. The 40 MW solar project would more than double the country’s installed solar capacity. Over the past few months, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Energy and Water of Afghanistan (MEW) has issued tenders for hybrid solar plants, the latest of which was in June, for a 5 MW facility. MEW had also tendered three hybrid solar projects totalling 65 MW in September 2017.