The project is located in the major cocoa-producing region of Divo, 200 kilometres north of the capital Abidjan. It will be a 76 MW facility and is being developed as a public-private partnership. SODEN has invested over 2 million euros to advance the project to the current stage of concession negotiations with the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, which began in August 2024 and are expected to conclude soon.
The plant will convert 600,000 tonnes of agricultural waste per year - primarily cocoa pod husks, bean shells, and rubber trees that have reached the end of their economic life - into renewable baseload electricity for the national grid, delivering climate mitigation, clean energy access and broad-based socio-economic development.
Once operational, the project will:
Generate 550 GWh/year of clean electricity - enough to serve over 1.4 million people
Avoid 300,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions annually over 30 years starting in 2029
Create over 3,900 jobs - including 3,500 during construction and 440 permanent roles
Support approximately 36,000 smallholder cocoa farmers through new income streams
Create EUR 6.8 million in local economic value per year for 30 years
The project is being financed through CFM’s EU-supported Climate Investor Two (CI2) fund, a blended finance facility focused on water, waste, and oceans infrastructure in emerging markets. Blended finance involves the strategic use of public capital to remove or reduce investment risk, enabling private capital to participate at a risk-return profile that meets its requirements.
CI2 consists of a development fund that absorbs early-stage risk and a construction equity fund that mobilises private investment into construction. The $3 million commitment to the Divo Project comes from the development fund, with up to $35 million in equity expected from the construction equity fund at financial close in 2026.
The development funding will support a range of preparatory activities - including technical design, permitting, environmental and social studies, concession negotiations with the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, and finalisation of a long-term power purchase agreement with the State, which will act as the offtaker.
“This project demonstrates the vital role of blended finance in bringing complex, first-of-its-kind infrastructure to life in frontier markets like Côte d’Ivoire” said Darron Johnson, Regional Head of Africa at CFM. “By using public capital to fund early-stage development, we can unlock private capital at scale - delivering not only clean energy and rural livelihoods, but also setting a precedent for future investment in the country.”
Côte d’Ivoire produces over 45 percent of the world’s cocoa. For every tonne harvested, more than 13 tonnes of waste, such as cocoa pod husks and bean shells, are left to rot at the farm gate. This releases harmful methane, contributes to plant disease and represents a missed economic opportunity for farmers.
The Divo Project will convert this waste into renewable electricity, reducing emissions and creating a new income stream for cocoa farmers. By sourcing feedstock from existing agricultural waste streams and end-of-life rubber trees, the project avoids the need for land conversion or deforestation, while making productive use of underutilised biomass. The project also supports forest conservation by replacing traditional wood-based fuels and generating value from waste. In addition, its agroforestry elements are expected to improve soil health and crop yields, reducing the need to clear additional forest in search of fertile land.
The Divo Project has been under development since 2016. In 2018, it received a $996,000 grant from the US Trade and Development Agency to support feasibility studies. While Côte d’Ivoire has initiated other agricultural biomass projects using palm oil waste, the project is the first to industrially process cocoa waste at scale and supply the national grid.
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