Nuru, a solar minigrid startup aiming to bring power to five-million people in one of the world’s least-electrified nations, is close to concluding a $60-million funding round, with a larger one to follow later this year.

The Democratic Republic of Congo-based company, the name of which means light in Swahili, won the backing of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the UK government-backed Renewable Energy Performance Platform, among others, for financing in the Series B round. The funds will be used to boost generation from its four plants by about ten-fold to 13.7 MW at peak capacity by adding three more larger-scale facilities.

The minigrids are providing power to urban communities in Congo’s war-ravaged east, where there’s little electrification of any kind, allowing them to leapfrog the use of power generated with fossil fuels and primarily use renewable sources in a region where security threats make it difficult to attract investment. Only about 10% of Congo’s 100-million inhabitants have access to electricity.

“In Congo we are a bit lonely. We are the only ones operating at scale,” Jonathan Shaw, a Kenyan-born American who co-founded the company, said in an interview. “The reason we are by ourselves is because it is super hard. Security is the biggest challenge.”

More than 100 armed groups are active in eastern Congo, with almost 7 million people displaced by violence, according to the United Nations.

Nuru was founded in 2015 as Kivu Green Energy and built Congo’s first minigrid in 2017. In 2020, it opened a 1.3 MW facility in the city of Goma, making it the largest mini-grid in sub-Saharan Africa with no connection to a national network.

Shaw, who first visited the Congolese town of Beni in 2003, returned in 2013 as a professor at the Christian Bilingual University after studying Congolese history. At the time almost all electricity came from unreliable diesel generators that frequently damaged electrical equipment.

The first grid by the company, which he co-founded with his PhD Research Assistant Archip Lobo Ngumba, was built on a neighborhood-scale in Beni. The one in Goma was erected after the company attracted interest from Nairobi-based E3 Capital and the Electrification Financing Initiative of the European Development Finance Institutions, or EDFI, which groups together development institutions from a number of European countries.

The solar panels are backed up by Tesla Inc. batteries and diesel, and the grid has 2 700 connections, with most of the revenue coming from commercial customers such as companies owning mobile-phone towers or water-treatment plants.

The proceeds of the Series B round will also include contributions from France’s Proparco, E3 and the Gaia Impact Fund. It’s expected to boost the number of people Nuru serves to half a million from about 50,000 currently.

The IFC said it’s considering investing as much as $5 million in the round, while Camco, the climate and impact fund manager that oversees the UK government-backed REPP, said the platform has already contributed $500 000 and will invest a further $5.5-million at the close of the round.

Shaw’s ownership of the company will drop by about half from its current 43%, with about $28-million being raised in the form of debt and the rest in equity. Smaller shareholders include E3 and EDFI, while employees own 17%.

A $90-million Series B round is expected to get under way later this year. To hit the longer term plan of serving five-million people, about $300-million will be needed, according to Shaw.