- The contract signed by Senelec will execute 1,350km of transmission lines and eight high-voltage transformer stations.
- The project will connect several thousand homes to the Senegalese grid.
The national electricity company of Senegal (Senelec) has signed a €200 million ($217,570,000) contract with a construction engineering company to build an array of electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure. The execution of the contract will see the construction of 1,350km of high-voltage and very high-voltage overhead and underground transmission lines along with eight very high-voltage transformer stations.
The project will connect several thousand homes to the Senegalese grid and employ more than 1,000 people over the three-year period during which the works will be carried out. According to the World Bank, Senegal has one of the highest electrification rates on the African continent at 78.6 per cent. However, these statistics reportedly carry significant disparities between the urban and rural areas of the country.
As the population grows and Senegal continues integrating renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power into its national grid, developing new transmission and distribution infrastructure will be vital to meeting the country’s energy demand. This project is part of a wider programme to expand Senegal’s transmission and distribution grid to efficiently and sustainably strengthen the country’s energy capacity by 2026.
This also aligns with the country’s goal to achieve universal electricity access by 2025, with 95 per cent of rural connections provided by the grid. The grid management system will be enhanced, for example, with the addition of an interface to remotely manage operations and detect defects in the overhead and underground power lines. The local teams will receive training and know-how with support from VINCI Energies’ French and Moroccan subsidiaries.