GE has announced that it will invest $2 billion in facility development, skills training, and sustainability initiatives across Africa by 2018.

GE made the announcement in advance of President Obama’s US-Africa Leaders Summit, where GE is hosting African and global government officials, policy experts, NGOs, entrepreneurs and business leaders for a conference on investment, infrastructure, and innovation in Africa.

Through partnerships and technology, GE is poised to help increase access, reliability, and affordability of core infrastructure throughout the continent.

Africa has emerged as the most promising growth region for GE. 

Total GE revenues in Africa in 2013 were $5.2 billion and in the past year, GE has won more than $8.3 billion in orders across Africa.

GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said: “I am proud of our 100-year history in Africa. Through investments such as our new multi-modal manufacturing facility in Nigeria, Algeria gas turbine manufacturing, and our customer innovation center in South Africa, we remain a committed partner to Africa’s sustainable growth.”

GE will focus its investment in Africa in three strategic areas: building infrastructure; delivering localized solutions to customers; and capacity building, by providing skills training and growing supply chain development in local communities.

New GE commitments in Africa include:

GE’s Distributed Power business will supply aeroderivative gas turbines in Algeria and Nigeria to increase grid reliability during peak power demands in Algeria and generate uninterrupted power at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s state oil refinery. As a founding partner for President Obama’s Power Africa initiative, GE committed to help bring online 5,000MW of new electric generation capacity in cooperation with the Initiative’s government and other private sector partners across six partner countries, including Nigeria.

GE’s “Company-to-Country” agreement with the government of Nigeria, which encourages the development of infrastructure projects and the transfer of skills and technology, will be renewed for another five years.

GE will supply approximately $1 billion in railway and power equipment to Angola, under a bilateral agreement signed this week between the Export-Import Bank and Angola’s Ministry of Finance to finance infrastructure development projects in the country.

The GE Foundation will invest $20 million over the next five years in health programs across Africa — including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi — to train nurse anesthetists and biomedical equipment technicians, among other health care initiatives.

Jay Ireland, president and CEO, GE Africa said, “GE has long been committed to unlocking Africa’s potential but, as our most recent deals in the region demonstrate, we believe there is still more that we can do. Our investments in infrastructure and people only strengthen our role as a key partner in helping to build Africa’s future.”