SNV Netherlands Development Organisation

SNV is a not-for-profit international development organization. Founded in the Netherlands in 1965, SNV has built a long-term, local presence in over 30 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with a diverse team of 1,220 specialists and generalists.

This global team of local and international advisors work with local partners to equip communities, businesses and organizations with the tools, knowledge and connections they need to increase their incomes and gain access to basic services – empowering them to break the cycle of poverty and guide their own development.

SNV provides advisory services, working towards effective solutions, through capacity building that addresses the systemic constraints that communities confront. For more than 50 years SNV has been present in some of the most under-developed countries around the world, including fragile states. This includes long-term, in-country presence and knowledge of Kenya through past and ongoing work, notably in several of the KOSAP target counties.

SNV is involved in grant and fund management and is currently implementing evidence-based advocacy and access to finance initiatives that will be synergetic and supportive of the KOSAP agenda.

Relevant experience includes Pico PV market development (awareness, entrepreneur capacity building, strengthening distribution channels, and establishing financing mechanisms); integrating PAYG business models into the sale of the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) products; technical assistance for the design of a results-based financing scheme for the deployment of off-grid solar; and the Kenya higher tier cookstoves Market Acceleration Result Based Financing Scheme.

SNV is also providing strategic support to the clean cooking sector in Kenya, including institutional and organizational strengthening of the Clean Cooking Association of Kenya (CCAK). Specific experience with disadvantaged communities includes implementing a market-based approach to energy access for refugees and the host community in Kakuma, Turkana County.

SunFunder

SunFunder is a specialist provider of debt financing to solar companies and projects in off-grid and grid-deficit parts of Africa and Asia. SunFunder’s goal is to help solar enterprises expand their activities and, ultimately, the number of people who gain improved access to energy.

Since 2012, SunFunder has closed 60 loan facilities with 45 solar borrowers totalling over $64m, with loans ranging in size from $250k to over $5m. Those customers are predominantly in East and West Africa. As a result, SunFunder’s investments have directly improved energy access for over 5 million people and mitigated over 450,000 tons of CO2 each year.
SunFunder has succeeded in raising, managing, structuring, deploying and monitoring the $15m Solar Empowerment Fund (fully deployed) and the $47m Beyond the Grid Solar Fund (active investment). It expects to reach its first close of a new $85m Solar Energy Transformation Fund in early 2019.

The company’s team, mostly based in Nairobi, is made up of specialists in tailoring innovative loan products to solar enterprises with speed and flexibility. Those products are working capital, inventory finance and structured finance solutions for companies operating in the off-grid residential, commercial and industrial, productive use and mini-grid solar sectors. Customers include solar distributors, importers, manufacturers, pay-as-you-go solar businesses, EPCs, project developers and commercial and industrial end users.

SunFunder has in-house structuring expertise and legal counsel, which allows it to provide tailored financing solutions for the sector. These include the Structured Asset Financing Instrument (SAFI), for pay-as-you-go or solar leasing companies to finance their growing book of customer receivables. SunFunder is also a leading arranger of syndicated facilities of $5m+ with co-investors.

While SunFunder’s loans have generally grown in size in parallel with the growth of the sector, it also provides relatively small ticket loans (<$500k) to earlier-stage solar companies. In the past, SunFunder made even smaller loans to companies that are now more established, bringing significant experience relevant to KOSAP’s inclusion of promising early-stage Kenyan solar operators.