The French development agency Agence française de développement (AFD) has approved a €40m loan to complete financing for the power interconnection project developed by the Organisation de mise en valeur du fleuve Gambie (OMVG). The project already benefits from a €650m funding from seven technical and financial partners, namely the Islamic Bank of Development, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the West African Development Bank, German KfW, the European Investment Bank and the Kuwaiti Fund for Development.
The project aims to build a 1,677-km long power interconnection with a transmission capacity of 800 MW. It will enable to export power generation from the 240 MW Kaleta dam in Guinea and from the 128 MW Sambagalou dam on the Gambia River in Senegal to neighbouring countries. That project is developed in the framework of the West African Power Pool (WAPP). It aims to reduce power shortages and related losses by 2017 and, in the long term, it will enable to link electrical grids of the OMVS (Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal) and of Transco CLSG (Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea).