AXIAN, led by Madagascar billionaire Hassanein Hiridjee, has signed €30 million of financing to build four solar plants with 62 megawatts of capacity in Benin.
AXIAN Group, the telecommunications and energy company run by Madagascar billionaire Hassanein Hiridjee, has signed €30 million ($33.6 million) of financing to build four solar power plants in Benin, the West African country’s first privately developed solar project.
The International Finance Corp., the World Bank’s private-sector arm, and Proparco, the French development finance institution, are providing the money, part of which comes from IFC’s Clean Technology Fund, a pool of cheap loans for low-carbon projects. AXIAN and Benin’s state-owned Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, known as CDC Bénin, also signed the agreements, which were announced in Cotonou, the commercial capital, on Oct. 29. Finance ministry officials, including Minister Hugues Oscar Lokossou, attended.
The plants, known together as IPP50, will cost about €45 million ($50.4 million). They will be built in the towns of Natitingou, Djougou, Parakou and Bohicon, with total capacity of about 62 megawatts of solar panels, or 50 megawatts of output to the grid. They are expected to produce about 110 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to serve about 383,000 people, and to avoid about 62,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
Ownership and lenders
AXIAN Energy Green, a unit of Hiridjee’s energy division, owns 80% of the two companies building the plants, ParaBo SAS and NatiDjo SAS, according to IFC disclosure documents. Sika Capital, a Beninese investment company that is 60% owned by local firm Egnon Consulting and 40% by CDC Bénin, owns the other 20%.
IFC’s board approved up to €16.8 million for the project in October 2025, half of it in standard loans and half in concessional loans from the Clean Technology Fund. The financing was signed a year later.
“Today, we are not simply signing financing agreements. We are making a choice for the future,” said Nathalie Kouassi Akon, IFC’s regional director for West Africa. She said the project had survived “first thanks to the tenacity of the Beninese authorities.”
Power for the national grid
The plants will sell their power to Société Béninoise de Production d’Électricité, the state power producer, under long-term purchase agreements, and will run under 20-year concessions from the government. Commercial operation is due to start in the first quarter of 2028.
Benin awarded the four sites in 2022 to a group made up of French solar company GreenYellow and Egnon Consulting. AXIAN Energy came in after the original developer withdrew, and it launched construction with Sika Capital in August 2025. Benin wants renewable sources to supply 30% of its electricity by 2030.
AXIAN’s push into West Africa
The deal is the latest in a run of solar projects for AXIAN in West Africa this month. On Oct. 20, the group signed up to €55.5 million of loans from Dutch lender FMO for a 50-megawatt plant in northern Ivory Coast, and it has since joined a 50-megawatt solar project in Guinea. Earlier in October, AXIAN signed a deal for a 200-megawatt solar plant in Zambia.
AXIAN Energy, run by Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Memmi, is aiming for 2 gigawatts of installed renewable capacity by 2030. The wider group also runs mobile phone networks, banks and property businesses in about 20 countries.
Hiridjee was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital, and returned home from a career in French finance in 1997 to join Hirimix, a family business founded by his uncles. He renamed it AXIAN in 2015 and has since expanded it from the Indian Ocean islands into mainland Africa.
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