The Trade and Development Fund (TDF), the concessional arm of Trade and Development Bank Group (TDB Group), and the World Bank Group (WBG) have signed five new grant agreements under the Accelerating Sustainable and Clean Energy Access Transformation (ASCENT) Programme. The agreements, totalling USD 10.8 million, will support clean cooking and distributed renewable energy (DRE) solutions across eight African countries, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia, with the goal of expanding access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy.
The grants, implemented through TDB’s Regional Energy Access Financing Facility (REAF), represent the first disbursements under ASCENT’s Results-Based Financing (RBF) window. Designed to incentivise verified energy access outcomes, the RBF mechanism provides performance-based grants to private companies delivering off-grid solar and clean cooking technologies in underserved and frontier markets.
Through these partnerships, more than 350,000 systems including solar home systems, clean cookstoves, and other distributed renewable energy solutions, are expected to be deployed, benefiting approximately 1.8 million people, many of them women and youth. The five grantee companies selected, BioLite, BURN, Ignite Energy Access, RDG, , and Yellow, will play a catalytic role in accelerating off-grid energy access and supporting national climate goals across the participating countries.
This milestone marks an important step in operationalizing ASCENT’s private sector window and reflects TDF’s leading efforts to advance Africa’s clean energy transition. In partnership with the World Bank Group, we are bridging financing gaps and enabling enterprises to expand clean energy access for underserved communities. These grants strengthen TDB Group’s broader climate and sustainable finance agenda by leveraging concessional resources to drive innovation, inclusion, and measurable social and environmental impact.
Ms. Mary Kamari, Executive Director of the Trade and Development Fund (TDF)
Within the wider ASCENT Programme, TDF, a subsidiary of the Trade and Development Bank Group (TDB Group), is implementing the Results-Based Financing (RBF) component of the Regional Energy Access Financing Facility (REAF), which has a total envelope of USD 12 million dedicated to supporting distributed renewable energy and clean cooking enterprises. The initiative reinforces TDF’s role in blending finance for inclusion, climate resilience, and sustainable growth, while complementing TDB Group’s ongoing partnership with the World Bank Group and other sustainable development initiatives that deliver measurable social and environmental impact across the continent.