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Ethiopia issued RfP for 250 MW scaling solar tender project

The Ethiopian government has published a Request for Proposals (RFP) as part of its 250 MW scaling solar tender project and has required the 12 pre-qualified bidders to submit their final proposals before the end of June 2019. The 12 bidders pre-selected in March 2018 - 28 companies submitted their application - include ACWA Power, the EDF-Masdar consortium, Total Eren-Access Power, Kepco-KoSPCo, Enel Green Power, Mitsui and Scatec Solar. They will have to submit their bids for the two PV projects with a capacity of 125 MW each. TheRfP will be set up under the World Bank-backed procurement scheme. 

Ethiopia plans to add 12 GW of hydropower, solar, wind and geothermal capacity via the private sector by 2020 under the framework of the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP 2). In January 2019, the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance launched a tender for six large-scale solar projects in the regions of Afar, Somali, Oromia and Tigray. Expected to have a total combined capacity of 798 MW, the projects will require around US$795m in investment and will be built under the framework of a public-private partnership. The country's previous tenders were issued by state-run power company Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) and were part of this Scaling Solar scheme. The first solar tender for the construction of a 100 MW solar plant in Metehara (Oromia) was won by the Italian power company Enel in partnership with the Ethiopian infrastructure company Orchid Business Group in October 2017.