TDB Puts 50 Million Dollars of Debt Into Aysha Wind, and Construction Still Has Not Started

The Trade & Development Bank has approved a 50-million-dollar loan for the 300MW Aysha Wind Power Project, becoming the latest development-finance lender to join the funding structure of Ethiopia's first wind-based independent power producer.

TDB Group President Admassu Tadesse disclosed that the facility is structured as debt rather than equity. The approval brings the 508-million-dollar scheme a step closer to financial close. Construction has yet to begin, and AMEA Power, the Dubai-based developer, still lists Aysha's status as financing.

Why the debt-versus-equity detail matters

It is the most informative thing in the announcement. A development bank taking equity is making a bet on the project company's returns. A development bank lending is taking a position senior to that bet, with a repayment schedule and security, and it will have satisfied itself on the power purchase agreement, the offtaker's creditworthiness and the currency in which the tariff is paid.

For every other IPP developer looking at Ethiopia, that is the signal to read: a lender has looked at an Ethiopian offtake contract and been willing to price it as debt.

What financial close still requires

Approval by one lender is not close. Close requires the full debt package committed, equity in place, the PPA and implementation agreements signed and conditions precedent satisfied. Until then a project remains, as AMEA Power's own status line concedes, in financing.

The gap between an approved facility and a turning turbine is where most African IPPs spend years. Aysha's significance is structural rather than immediate: it would be the country's first wind IPP, and it is the template the next ones will be financed against.

Open

Neither the total committed debt nor the other lenders in the structure have been disclosed, and no construction start date has been announced. The tariff and the currency of the power purchase agreement have not been published, which is the single figure that would let anyone judge whether this project is replicable.

Sources: Addis Fortune, 21 September 2026