Genesis Capital Advises on WAEMU-First Private Energy Green Bond

Daba Finance/Genesis Capital Sells WAEMUs $76M First Private-Energy Green Bond

AFRICAN STOCKS AND FINANCEApril 20, 2026 at 11:52 PM UTC

TLDR

Genesis Capital advises on first-ever West African green bond for Ivory Coast solar developer Poro Power 1 S.A.
€43 million anchor investment by Africa Finance Corporation secures local institutional investors for the project finance green bond.
The innovative bond structure supports a 66-megawatt solar plant in Korhogo, Côte d'Ivoire, benefiting 400,000 households and reducing CO₂ emissions by 70,000 tonnes annually.

Genesis Capital has pulled off a first for West African capital markets, advising on a CFAF 42.65 billion (65 million euros) green bond for Ivory Coast solar developer Poro Power 1 S.A. — the first project finance green bond ever issued by a private energy company in the WAMU region.

The Abidjan-based investment bank structured the bond as a 15-year instrument carrying an 8.75% fixed coupon, rated A- by Bloomfield Investment Corporation. Africa Finance Corporation wrote an anchor cheque, enough to pull in local institutional investors who would not have touched an untested structure otherwise. The deal closed fully subscribed.

The money goes toward a 66-megawatt solar plant in Korhogo, northern Côte d'Ivoire — the country's largest privately-owned solar facility on completion, expected in 2027. The plant sits on a 25-year take-or-pay power purchase agreement with the Ivorian government, the kind of contract structure that makes long-tenor bond investors comfortable. Annual output is projected at 130 GWh, enough to supply 400,000 households and cut 70,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year.

For Genesis Capital, the deal is a calling card. The firm, led by managing partner Charles Kié, built a structure that had never been used in the WAMU energy market and got it across the line with international-standard documentation, a Morningstar Sustainalytics green opinion, and AFC as co-arranger. That combination gave regional investors something they rarely see: a long-dated, rated, green-labelled private infrastructure bond with hard contractual protections.

The total financing package combines €30 million in equity with the €65 million bond, with MAC African SGI serving as market arranger. The project is led by Ivorian entrepreneurs Jean Marc Aïé Yapi and Livane Bouedy, backed by shareholder Côte d'Ivoire Solar I GmbH.

The deal is the first infrastructure project financing raised through public capital markets in the WAMU, and the first direct AFC investment on the regional bond market.

Key Takeaways

Genesis Capital's execution matters beyond this single deal because the WAMU bond market has a structural problem it has not solved: governments borrowed a record 11.9 trillion CFA francs through the market in 2025 and plan to raise 12.7 trillion in 2026, yet private infrastructure issuance has barely registered. The regional regulator CREPMF published a green bond framework in 2020 and the BRVM launched a bond accelerator program with GGGI to push more private issuances, but uptake was near zero until this transaction. What Genesis Capital demonstrated is that the architecture exists — a rated, covenanted, green-labelled project bond can be sold to domestic institutions at scale — but it requires an advisor willing to build the structure from scratch and a multilateral like AFC to anchor it and signal credit comfort to the market. That template, now proven, is replicable across the region's pipeline of renewable energy projects at a time when external funding for African infrastructure is becoming harder to access and costlier to deploy.

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