Climate Finance Partnership, a fund managed by BlackRock Alternatives, is buying nearly a third of the shares in Kenyan wind farm Lake Turkana, it said on Tuesday.
Climate-focused funds are increasingly training their sights on Africa, which offers growing demand for clean energy and other climate infrastructure.
The continent is also suffering from the ravages of climate change-driven events like drought. Kenya and neighbours Ethiopia and Somalia are going through the worst drought in decades, which has caused starvation among millions.
BlackRock said the fund will acquire the stake in Lake Turkana Wind Power in Kenya’s far north from Finnish development financier Finnfund, Danish wind turbines maker Vestas (VWS.CO), and the Investment Fund for Developing Countries, a Danish development financier.
A regulatory filing published in the Kenyan press on Tuesday said the stake amounts to 31.25% of the shares of LTWP, a 365-wind turbine facility with a 310 megawatt capacity.
The regulatory notice defined the stake as “controlling”, but BlackRock later said that was within the meaning of Kenya’s energy law, not in the conventional sense of a controlling or majority stake. It did not disclose the value of the deal.
“The LTWP project provides reliable, low-cost energy to Kenya’s national grid via a 20-year power purchase agreement with Kenya Power,” BlackRock said, referring to the East African nation’s power distribution company.
