Mali’s interim Prime Minister, Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, and those of Guinea, Bernard Goumou, Mauritania, Mohamed Bilal Messaoud and Senegal, Amadou Ba, inaugurated the Gouina hydroelectric dam on Saturday, 45 km from Kayes, in western Mali. The dam is a regional project with a capacity of 140 megawatts (MW) and is being built by the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du fleuve Sénégal (OMVS).
The infrastructure is located on the Senegal River, the ninth longest river in Africa. The 1,347-metre-long structure has a dam height of 19 metres, a storage capacity of 136 million cubic metres and is connected to the Manantali Electricity Management Company (SOGEM), which was already producing 260 megawatts from Manantali and Féllou. This infrastructure will make it possible to “increase the production capacity of Manantali to 340 megawatts“, said Mali’s interim Prime Minister, Abdoulaye Maïga, during the inauguration ceremony.
Thus, “the dam has a nominal installed capacity of 140 megawatts and an average output of 607 gigawatts/hour. Its total cost is about 284 billion CFA francs (454 million dollars), of which 248.9 billion CFA francs (398 million dollars) are financed by Eximbank of China and 34.5 billion CFA francs (54 million dollars) by the Société de Gestion de l’Energie de Manantali (SOGEM)”, he detailed.
According to Mali’s Minister of Mines, Energy and Water, Lamine Seydou Traoré, “this structure, which has already been put into service and which has begun to inject the first megawatts into the electricity grids of the three countries that are shareholders in SOGEM, will make it possible to strengthen the production of energy in these countries, but beyond the strengthening of energy, it should make it possible to reduce the cost of production for the companies of our three countries. It also states that “the 140 megawatts will be divided equally between the energy companies of Mali, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal”.
Taking advantage of the occasion, Colonel Maiga urged OMVS to redouble its efforts for the implementation, as soon as possible, of another larger hydroelectric dam: that of Koukoutamba in Guinea. This will cover the energy needs of the four OMVS member states, according to the organisation. With a capacity of 294 megawatts, it will be the largest of all the structures built by OMVS since its creation.
