GRMF HEAT publishes list of EOIs for geothermal direct use funding in East Africa

Drying Maize, Kenya (source: flickr/ shankar s., creative commons)

The Geothermal Risk Mitigation Facility (GRMF) for East Africa under the African Union Commission’s Regional Geothermal Coordinate Unit (RGCU) has published the list of Expressions of Interest received for the funding opportunity offered under the GRMF HEAT programme.

THE GRMF HEAT funding programme is available for surface studies and infrastructure costs required for surface exploration of geothermal prospects in Eastern Africa for direct use applications. The call for EOIs for the programme was announced in March 2023.

EOIs were received from the following companies and institutions:

• Geothermal Development Company (GDC)
•  Djiboutian Office of Geothermal Development (ODDEG)
• Energy Development Corporation Limited (EDCL)
• EMS Consulting
• GEG
• Hudson Drilling
• 4th Resource Corp.
• Mumbi Limited
• Diageo Great Britain Limited
• Rift Valley Institute of Science and Technology
• Tanzania Geothermal Development Company (TGDC)
• Ministry of Mineral Development Uganda

Following this step is a Request for Application (RfA) which presumably had already been sent out to the firms listed above. In the second stage, Applications from short-listed Applicants will be accepted within a a specified period. Applications that score over a certain threshold (70%) will be eligible to enter into contract negotiations with the African Union Commission. The actual number of awards will be limited to available funding.

In the case of a successful negotiation, the Grant Agreements will be concluded between the African Union Commission and the Applicants. The Grant Agreements set requirements for the following monitoring and reporting phase for the surface studies and the reservoir confirmation drilling and testing projects as well as specifications on the disbursement of grants.

Source: GRMF East Africa