West Africa’s regional body will pool its resources to establish an electricity market to end the blackouts that have blighted its 15 member states for decades, Reuters reports.
Heads of states who gathered for a meeting of the Economic Community of West African States agreed to develop a regional electricity market almost two decades after the plan was conceived, Etienne Bailly, project director at Transco CLSG said at a power conference in Nigeria.
Transco CLSG – set up by West African Power Pool (WAPP) – will develop a 1,300 km (807 miles) interconnection line across Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“In the next 10 years West Africa will have enough power plants, will have enough interconnection facilities,” he said.
A consortium of development agencies including the World Bank, African Development Bank, European Investment Bank and German Export Bank have agreed to provide 329 million euros ($374.43 million) over 25 years for the project.