Theresa May has announced a £56 million ($72 million) contribution to a World Bank backed battery storage fund for South Africa.
The prime minister unveiled the funding earlier this week (29 August) while leading the UK’s trade mission to sub-Saharan Africa.
The money will go towards a $500 million investment in battery storage developed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank in partnership with the South African government.
The fund aims to accelerate the development of the country’s renewable energy sector by boosting the deployment of battery storage.
It has been channelled through the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund (CTF), which is designed to provide new large-scale financial resources to help the demonstration, deployment, and transfer of low-carbon technologies.
The latest contribution has helped the UK become the largest overall contributor to the CTF, having supplied more than $1.5 billion.
The government also announced the next phase of the UK-Nigeria Climate Finance Accelerator.
This initiative aims to match government, project developers, finance market players from Nigeria, with experts in climate finance and investment in green projects from the City of London. The green projects include increasing Nigeria’s renewable energy capacity.
Temperatures are expected to rise faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world due to climate change.
Business secretary Greg Clark said: “Investing in research, developing the skills of tomorrow, and tackling the global threat of climate change are key commitments of this government and are at the core of our modern Industrial Strategy.”