Africa-focused hydropower developer Tembo Power Holdings (TPH), formerly Tembo Power Limited, has appointed Jacques Barouhiel to lead its financial structuring business as MD.

TPH is an independent power producer (IPP) with a focus on small hydropower in sub-Saharan Africa. It holds rights over 13 projects across Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Cameroon, for a total installed capacity of about 300 MW.

Barouhiel will be based in Mauritius and, in addition to running the day-to-day affairs of the business, will oversee the financing of the company and interact with Finergreen, TPH’s project finance adviser on its current portfolio of projects.

He brings 17 years’ investment banking and hedge fund experience.

Prior to joining TPH, Barouhiel worked for Barclays Bank as funding and capital solutions MD for ten years, where he was in charge of structuring complex transactions for the bank and for institutional investors, trading capital intensive and complex fixed income derivatives. He also designed and executed transactions aimed at reducing the bank’s credit exposure and associated capital requirements.

TPH founder Raphael Khalifa says the company is looking forward to further enhancing its development and construction equity financing solutions, as well as better assessing their impact on the company’s cash flows and funding needs over the short to medium term.

Barouhiel’s extensive quantitative and data science background, together with his experience as a business sponsor of a proprietary pricing app at Barclays, will also help build proprietary project management tools for TPH. This will assist the company in its effort to further improve the execution of partnerships with industry leaders and fast-track project financing process at project level, and provide even more transparency and reporting to investors and lenders.

His record in structured finance is also expected to position TPH ideally in the context where the sub-Saharan African market is getting deeper, more merger and acquisition transactions are taking place and fixed-income instruments should become a credible alternative to common equity funding.

Meanwhile, according to TPH, run-of-river hydropower is one of the most environment-friendly energy technologies globally, and projects between 10 MW and 50 MW offer affordable and reliable electricity in areas where the national electrical utilities need it most.