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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