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In July 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Commercial Law Development Program (in partnership with the African Legal Support Facility) brought together a group of world-class experts to update and refresh the "Understanding Power Purchase Agreements" handbook five years after the original publication. The updated handbook, funded by Power Africa, includes additional insight and case studies on the negotiation of power purchase agreements for both small and large-scale projects, along with new guidance on emerging issues in the African power markets such as commercial and industrial power purchase agreements and cross-border agreements.
The updated handbook was drafted using the Book Sprint method, which allowed our diverse group of contributors from African governments, multilateral institutions, development banks, private developers, procurement consultants, and leading international law firms, all whom contributed their time on a pro-bono basis, to complete the handbook in only five days. Version 2.0 of the handbook is available here in PDFformat. The handbook is published under the Creative Commons License. Please contact Mohammed Loraoui with any questions regarding the handbook.
The authors of the Second Edition of Understanding Power Purchase Agreements prepared brief presentations giving a general overview of each chapter of the book. Please find the links to the presentations below.
Since 2013, the U.S. Government’s Power Africa initiative has sought to marshal technical, legal, and financial resources to support the goal of doubling access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through a substantial network of public and private sector partners, Power Africa is working alongside dozens of African governments to facilitate the development of privately financed and operated power projects on a scale that will meet the continent’s power deficit.
The Understanding handbooks establish a common understanding of best practices around successful power project development. The Understanding series now includes a total of five handbooks, with 55,00 copies in print and tens of thousands more copies downloaded online. As with the previous handbooks, this handbook, which was led by CLDP and the African Development Bank’s African Legal Support Facility, is the product of a consultative process involving U.S. Government agencies, African governments, multilateral institutions, and private sector stakeholders.
The following is a list of authors who contributed to the Second Edition of Understanding Power Purchase Agreements (in alphabetical order):
