This report identifies and analyses key risks and barriers to private-sector investment in interconnected mini-grids (IMGs) in Nigeria – and evaluates policy and financial instruments designed to address them. The report presents a toolkit of interventions tailored to the Nigerian investment environment. Employing the recommended policies and measures will allow the government to reduce, transfer, or compensate for the identified risks and barriers. The objective is to accelerate the private sector-led deployment of IMGs at scale.

The project team designed a survey tailored to IMG investments adapted from the Derisking Matrix for Mini-Grids developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as part of its Derisking Renewable Energy Investment (DREI) methodology (UNDP, 2018). The survey assesses 10 risk categories: social acceptance, hardware, digital, labour, energy market, developer, end-user credit, financing, currency, and sovereign risk. Each risk category consists of one or more underlying barriers, adding up to 23 barriers in total.