The AFD which stands for French Development Agency has approved US $9m grant for the development of the Tendaho geothermal project.

 

The signing of the grant agreement took place at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation between Frederic Bontems, Ambassador of France to Ethiopia, Ethiopian State Minister of Finance and Economic Cooperation, Admasu Nebebe, and Ignace Monkam-Daverat, the AFD regional manager in Addis Ababa.

 

The grant is an additional funding to this project, which already benefited from a US $10m concessional loan from AFD and a total of US $8 m from previous European Union Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund (EU-AITF) grants.

 

Ethiopian Electric Power is implementing the geothermal project, in coordination with Geological Survey of Ethiopia. The funding will help finish the drilling activities planned as part of the geothermal development and exploration effort in the Afar region.

 

Admasu Nebebe said developing the geothermal project aims at being a source that is reliable and low carbon, and thereby improve its capacity for climate change adaptation.

 

The activities will concentrate on developing a shallow reservoir in Tendaho in order to allow a sustainable exploitation with a capacity of an estimated 10MW, and on exploiting a deep reservoir by drilling wells at great depth.