Swedfund has invested $30m in the Mirova Gigaton Fund, a blended finance debt fund to accelerate the clean energy transition in emerging countries in Africa and Asia Pacific predominantly, as well as Latin America and the Middle East. 

The main purpose of investing is to reach out to projects in developing countries, with debt financing through a wide range of important, complementary solar energy solutions outside the regular grid, so-called off-grid solutions.

Mirova SunFunder is an impact investor, solving energy access and climate change challenges in frontier markets, primarily Africa, by providing clean energy financing.

Mirova SunFunder, formed by the acquisition of SunFunder by Mirova in June 2022, has closed more than $230m in debt financing to 59 solar borrowers in emerging markets, improving energy access for millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Solar energy solutions are crucial to achieving the 2030 goal of universal access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy, said Swedfund's CEO Maria Håkansson.

The fund’s target size is $500m and expects to deploy $1.2 billion of private debt throughout its life primarily to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in solar home systems, agri-solar, commercial & industrial solar, telecom tower solarization, mini-grids and other promising sectors such as e-mobility, battery storage, climate-smart food systems, energy efficiency and carbon credit pre-financing.

Swedfund is a long-standing partner of Mirova SunFunder: in 2020, it invested $12m in the firm’s prior debt fund.

Swedfund contributed to develop the fund’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects through guidance on the implementation of sustainability improvements, the hiring of an ESG & Impact Manager and by providing Technical Assistance support to build an environmental and social management system and strengthen the fund's gender equality work.