A clean tech utility and energy access company, Havenhill Synergy Limited, says it has been awarded a grant by Power Africa through the United States Agency for International Development for the electrification of 50 primary healthcare facilities in Oyo State.
A statement by the firm said the move was part of its energising healthcare initiative, committed to deploying clean-energy solutions to bridge the energy gap and improve healthcare service delivery across the country.
The company and four others received $2.3m grant to power 245 public healthcare facilities across Africa.
The Chief Executive Officer of Havenhill Synergy Limited, Olusegun Odunaiya, said about 60 per cent of healthcare facilities in Africa did not have access to electricity and of those that did, less than 30 per cent had reliable access to power.
Odunaiya noted that for the healthcare facilities to deliver quality and efficient services, access to reliable electricity was important.
He added that in the past two years, the company had deployed over 1MW of solar-hybrid systems across rural, peri-urban and urban healthcare facilities in South-West and South-South Nigeria.
According to the statement, Havenhill would share the $2.3m grant with four other companies with competence in healthcare facility electrification — Aptech Africa, D.Light, Equatorial Power Ltd., and Solar Works B.V. — to electrify 245 off-grid healthcare facilities in Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.
Odunaiya said, “Over 14 tertiary healthcare facilities in the South-South were electrified under the ‘COVID-19 and Beyond’ programme under the World Bank and African Development Bank Group-funded Nigeria Electrification Project.
“This is a win for the industry and the healthcare facilities to be electrified. We are excited for this scale-up phase of our energising healthcare initiative that will enable over 700,000 patients annually to receive better healthcare service. We are grateful for yet another opportunity from the Power Africa team.
“We are delighted to further contribute to the improvement of the Nigerian health sector through the provision of reliable electricity that would aid the work of medical practitioners and caregivers and also impact the lives of those within the communities.”
In addition, Havenhill would be injecting substantial equity & debt as counterpart funding alongside this grant provided by Power Africa in order to electrify these 50 healthcare facilities, the statement.