Swedish-based investment platform Trine has partnered with Altech Group, a Democratic Republic of Congo-based (DRC) distributor of clean energy products and services.
The new partnership, totalling EUR5 million across multiple tranches, is set to accelerate investments in solar in the DRC, expanding access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy for off-grid and poor-grid households.
The first debt financing round will finance over 3,000 solar home systems in one of the most energy poor countries in the world. These systems are expected to reach nearly 14,000 people with clean energy across 21 of DRC’s 26 provinces and are estimated to reduce 1,300 tons of CO2 during their lifetime. Later debt financing rounds will follow in 2021.
“We are pleased to announce Altech Group is coming onboard as our partner, elevating our offering towards investors within the solar home system sector. Nearly 90 per cent of the population of over 80 million is without access to electricity, which means there is a tremendous market potential for Altech’s products. Their innovative life-improving product solutions will bring tremendous value to our portfolio and we hope investors will find them as interesting as we do,” says Sam Manaberi, CEO and co-founder of Trine.
“This commitment from Trine is a significant inflection point for Altech. Since 2013 we’ve built a near-national distribution network, sold over 220,000 products and impacted more than 1.2 million lives, all without any real access to capital. We believe that our relationship with Trine and the scale of the commitment will only lead to an even greater number of people getting access to our life-changing products,” says Washikala Malango, CEO and co-founder of Altech Group
