OPIC to Dedicate Staff Member for South Africa in 2013
October 16, 2012
(OPIC)
Will support implementation of US-Africa Clean
Energy Finance Initiative
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The Overseas
Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S.
Government’s development finance institution,
will dedicate a senior staff member for South
Africa in 2013, aiming to leverage the
country’s position as a business hub and
strategic U.S. partner into new investment
opportunities for American and African
companies.
In the past two years OPIC has made significant
efforts to expand its work in Africa, resulting
in an extraordinary 300 percent increase in the
agency’s commitments to the region last year.
Whereas Sub-Saharan Africa comprised only four
percent of OPIC’s global portfolio of loans,
guarantees and political risk insurance in
2001, today it stands at a full 21 percent.
“OPIC’s focus on Africa reflects both its
strategic importance to the Obama
Administration and also the growing interest of
U.S. investors in the continent” said OPIC
President and CEO Elizabeth Littlefield. “We
are very bullish on Africa, and we expect that
the dedication of a senior staff member for
South Africa will mean new opportunities for
OPIC to support investment to key African
countries through its financing and risk
mitigation instruments.”
U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Donald Gips
said, “We are excited that OPIC has chosen
South Africa for this commitment of resources
in Africa. As the continent’s economies
continue to grow, and its middle classes
increase their spending power, ever more
investment opportunities will present
themselves to U.S. businesses. Having OPIC
resources engaging in southern Africa’s
business gateway will enhance our ability to
bring those opportunities to realization.”
The OPIC staff member, along with other U.S.
Government personnel, will also help OPIC
implement the U.S.-Africa Clean Energy Finance
Initiative (US-ACEF), a new program which
aligns the resources of OPIC, the State
Department, the U.S. Trade and Development
Agency and the U.S. Agency for International
Development to catalyze private sector
investment in clean energy projects throughout
Africa. US-ACEF is expected to catalyze
hundreds of millions of dollars of new OPIC
financing, as well as additional private sector
investment, in clean energy projects.
OPIC is currently providing $629 million
financing and political risk insurance to
projects in South Africa, in the financial
services, construction and power sectors. Last
month, OPIC’s Board of Directors approved $250
million in financing for the agency’s first
solar power project in the country, a
60-megawatt plant with SunEdison that will help
diversify the country’s electricity generation
beyond its heavy coal concentration and in the
process create jobs and displace approximately
140,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions in its
first year alone.
Over its 40-year history, OPIC has committed
more than $7.6 billion in financing and
political risk insurance to 460 projects in
Sub-Saharan Africa. Those projects have
delivered nearly 2700 megawatts of new
electrical power across the continent; hundreds
of thousands of new housing units; thousands of
loans and microloans for African entrepreneurs;
and the construction of railways and port
facilities, miles of new roads and other
physical infrastructure critical to the
continent’s economic growth.
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