The African Development Bank Group has given the green light for a €100 million ($114 million) loan to the North African subsidiary of China’s Gotion Power for its LFP battery gigafactory project in Morocco.

The bank confirmed the loan agreement with Gotion Power Morocco on July 24 — and said it also planned to crowd in an extra €141 million from financial partners to support the eventual 100GWh capacity project in the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra Free Trade Zone.

Gotion started initial infrastructure work at the site in May 2025, saying the gigafactory would be the first such plant in the Middle East and North African region, capable of producing 10GWh of battery cells and packs for EVs on completion of its first phase.

Total investment in the first phase of the plant is projected at around €1.3 billion.

Bank group VP for power, energy, climate and green growth, Kevin Kariuki, said: “Battery storage is the missing link in Africa’s clean energy transition. A facility of this scale, powered primarily by renewable energy, strengthens the foundations for the large-scale integration of solar and wind power, which our grids increasingly depend on.”

Achraf Tarsim, the bank group’s country manager for Morocco, said the gigafactory would help foster an African industrial ecosystem for batteries and EVs while promoting domestic processing of minerals critical to the energy transition.

The loan deal comes less than two years after Gotion announced a partnership with Saudi energy giant Acwa Power — which will develop a 500MW wind facility and 2,000MWh BESS to support the gigafactory.

Earlier this month, the head of the African Export-Import Bank urged the continent’s leaders to choke off supplies of battery raw materials such as lithium to other countries and instead power homegrown African EV battery industries.

Afreximbank president and board chairman George Elombi said Africa’s economic sovereignty could only be achieved by industrialising at scale — processing its own resources and securing financing to develop batteries “on its own terms”.