Chinese Firms To Start Work On $4.8 billion Africa's Second Largest Hydroelectric Plant In Nigeria

Chinese Firms To Start Work On $4.8 billion Africa’s Second Largest Hydroelectric Plant In Nigeria – Minister

Nigeria will build the second-largest hydroelectric plant in Africa after the government settled a legal dispute that was delaying the project, Power Minister Sale Mamman said.

“We have now overcome the major problem stopping this project and it is nearly over,” Mamman said in an interview in Abuja, the capital. He said Attorney General Abubakar Malami is finalizing the terms of the settlement, which are undisclosed.

Only 60% of residents of Africa’s most populous country have access to electricity and even those who do are plagued by regular outages. President Muhammadu Buhari has made tackling the energy deficit a priority, pledging to rehabilitate dilapidated power infrastructure and build new ones, including the Mambilla facility in the eastern Taraba state.

First conceived in the 1970s, the complex of dams on the Donga River will produce 3,050 megawatts, equivalent to a quarter of Nigeria’s current installed capacity. International arbitration in Paris initiated by Sunrise Power and Transmission Co., a company that once held the construction contract, was recently resolved, clearing the main obstacle to the plant’s construction, according to Mamman.

The only bigger hydro power facility in Africa is Ethiopia’s 6,000-megawatt Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which was started in 2011 and is now more than five years behind schedule. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s government also has a dam, which is still under construction. It will be capable of producing as much as 11,000 megawatts.