In December 2019, OnePower signed a mini-grid concession agreement for Ha Makebe, a village in the Berea District of Lesotho. This signing of this agreement is a major milestone for rural electrification in the country, marking the start of testing mini-grid business models in Lesotho and paving the way for many more such projects to come.
Numerous parties have been involved in making this agreement possible and OnePower would like to take this opportunity to thank the following teams:
- EU GET.invest for providing 1PWR and GoL with Transaction Advisors (https://www.get-invest.eu/)
- The Lesotho Ministry of Energy and Meteorology, the staff of the Department of Energy
- European External Action Service and the Delegation of the European Union to Lesotho (https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/lesotho_en)
- Covington & Burling LLP, Sidley LLP and Holland & Knight LLP (https://www.cov.com/, https://www.sidley.com/en/us/, https://www.hklaw.com/en)
- EDFI ElectriFI (https://www.edfi.eu/facility/electrifi/)
- REPP (https://repp.energy/)
We sincerely thank all of the above stakeholders for their contributions to making the concession agreement and thus mini-grids a reality in Lesotho.
We are excited to start on this journey and look forward to developing many mini-grids in rural communities in Lesotho over the coming years.