Steven Payma is a business development specialist with over nine years of experience on public-private initiatives for large-scale utility and off-grid electrification, funded by multilateral banks (World Bank, African Development Bank) and development partners (USAID, European Union, SIDA).

His expertise spans project preparation and financial modelling to build pipelines of technically sound, bankable projects for tender; financial structuring; and improving private-sector access to finance through blended finance, results-based financing, end-user subsidies, matching grants, crowdfunding and carbon trading. He designs site-specific risk instruments for public and private partners, supports private developers through legal and regulatory requirements, and works to remove policy, institutional, regulatory and market constraints.

He is skilled in least-cost geospatial investment planning for renewable energy, resource mobilisation, and financial and economic analysis of renewable energy investments, and in developing viable business plans that address market barriers such as affordability, acceptability, awareness and availability.