International law firm Addleshaw Goddard (AG) has advised the Facility for Energy Inclusion’s Off-Grid Energy Access Fund (FEI-OGEF), managed by Lion’s Head Global Partners Asset Management, on its provision of a $5m debt facility to African fintech start-up, Yellow.

The funding will help support Yellow's ambition to help make renewable energy more accessible to low-income households across Africa and follows several successful funding rounds, bringing its overall debt facility to $20m.

Yellow is quickly emerging as one of Africa's most promising start-ups, providing wide-spread accessibility to the off-grid solar market, which has historically failed to get off the ground because of lack of consumer financing and last-mile distribution.

The product, which has already brought electricity for the first time to over 240,000 households across the continent, enables a distributed network of sales agents to serve rural communities with affordable financing for renewable energy. Yellow has reported revenue growth of 350% per annum.

The deal was led through AG's Africa Business Group, which has over 26 years' experience of working on the continent, often advising large global corporates including Diageo and bp. 

The AG team was led by Paul Jones, with support from Inga Aryanova, Matthew Barnes and Bill Downer. 

Paul Jones, Partner at AG, said:

"Close to 600 million people in Africa have no access at all to electricity, with low-income, rural households suffering disproportionately due to the costs associated with regular energy consumption. Yellow's product will help to make electricity more affordable and therefore open up the market to potentially millions of people throughout the continent." 

"It was a pleasure to work with both Lion's Head Global Partners and Yellow on this deal."

Ross Thompson, Chief Financial Officer at Yellow, said: 

“We are delighted to have closed the debt facilities from our new partners that provide us with the resources to serve at least one million more people. We are now shifting our capital raise focus to our Series B equity round."