Africa Finance Corporation has disbursed the first $60 million tranche of a $300 million corporate loan facility for a 119MW thermal power plant in Burkina Faso, the continental infrastructure solutions provider said in a statement. The funds will support development of the plant by Aksa Enerji Üretim A.Ş., Türkiye’s largest publicly-listed power generation company, and the transaction marks AFC’s first investment in Burkina Faso. The plant will be built in Ouagadougou, and the project follows a 20-year guaranteed power purchase agreement Aksa signed with Burkina Faso’s national utility, Sonabel, announced on November 25, 2025.
Why it matters. Burkina Faso is a country of 24 million people where only one in five currently have access to power, and the country currently imports approximately 60% of its power supply, leaving homes, businesses and industry vulnerable to supply disruptions and elevated energy costs that constrain industrialisation and growth. According to the government’s National Energy Pact 2026-2030, imports accounted for 48.89% of total available energy in 2024, coming mainly from Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo, while national production rose from 932.2 GWh in 2019 to 1,419.1 GWh in 2024, a gain that has still not kept pace with demand. The pact targets electricity access for 17.9 million more people by 2030, including 11.1 million in rural areas, alongside raising installed renewable capacity from 228 MWc in 2024 to 887 MWc by 2030. A single 119MW plant becoming the country’s largest generation asset shows how far Burkina Faso still has to go to close that gap.
What changes. Once operational in 2027, the plant is expected to reduce dependence on imported electricity by more than half while strengthening domestic generation capacity, and by delivering more reliable, lower-cost baseload power, AFC expects it to improve energy security, attract private investment and create a stronger foundation for long-term growth. The financing builds on AFC’s existing $150 million corporate loan facility to Aksa Enerji from 2025, which supported the company’s utility-scale gas-to-power projects in Senegal and Ghana, including a 255MW combined-cycle gas plant in Senegal designed to run on domestic natural gas, establishing Aksa as a trusted partner for AFC across the region before this expanded Burkina Faso deal. Aksa’s chairman, Cemil Kazanci, called Burkina Faso “an important milestone” in the company’s long-term commitment to Africa, while AFC’s president, Samaila Zubairu, framed reliable power as the precondition for industrialisation, saying dependable electricity is what lets countries industrialise and businesses grow.
What to watch. The national plan projects annual electricity demand growth of between 7.3% and 10.9% through 2040, a range that does not even account for connection requests Sonabel cannot currently meet or the country’s own industrialisation ambitions, meaning a single 119MW plant closes only part of the gap it is meant to address. The real test is sequencing: whether AFC releases the remaining tranches of the $300 million facility on schedule as construction proceeds, whether the plant reaches commercial operation on the 2027 target despite Burkina Faso’s security environment, and whether Sonabel’s 20-year offtake commitment holds up financially as the state weighs this asset against the renewable and grid investments the same national pact calls for in parallel.