The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group and Eritrea have signed an agreement for $19.5Million in grant funding for the Desert to Power Eritrea 12MW Mini Grid Project.
Ghiorghish Teklemichae, Eritrea’s Minister of Finance and National Development, who is also the Bank Group Governor for the country, signed on behalf of the government during a March 10 2025 signing ceremony. Léandre Bassole, the Bank Group’s Deputy Director General for East Africa, represented the institution.
The financing, to be sourced from the AfDB Group’s Transitional Support Facility (TSF), will support the rollout of mini-grids that will generate 12MW of electricity across the regions of Teseney (6MW), Kerekebet (3MW), and Barentu (3MW).
The project will be implemented by the national Ministry of Energy, the Eritrea Electricity Corporation (EEC) and local companies under the supervision and guidance of a design and engineering technical consulting firm to be contracted.
The project is expected to provide improved energy access to more than 235,000 Eritreans, 20% of them women and youth. Beneficiaries will include residential households, small-scale farms, agro-processing zones, and water supply systems. The project will additionally benefit over 160 schools and 90 health centers in the Gash Barka region.
To build local capacity and ensure project sustainability, 25 local companies will be trained and equipped with tools and machinery. “Capacity building and knowledge transfer are critical to the success of the project’s implementation,”AfDB noted at the signing event. “This will be a continuous process.”
The project advances the objectives of the 2018 Eritrea National Energy Policy and is aligned with the AfDB’s Interim Country Strategy Paper 2022-2024 for Eritrea (https://apo-opa.co/4ioCBEo).
The Eritrea National Energy Policy aims to increase electrification rates and ensure that renewable energy contributes 20% of electric power by 2030, while the AfDB’s Interim Country Strategy Paper 2022-2024 prioritizes developing quality and sustainable infrastructure to support agricultural value-chains for economic diversification and structural transformation.
