Uzbekistan became the first country outside the African continent to join the World Bank Group's Scaling Solar program. The Uzbek government intends to develop up to 1 gigawatt of solar power and in May 2018 signed a mandate with IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, for a 100-megawatt project in the Navoi region in southwestern Uzbekistan. The project was competitively priced at 2.7 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour as a result of a tender, which was announced on October 4, 2019.