The African Development Bank (AfDB) continues to support the energy reforms undertaken by the Comoros. The Pan-African financial institution has recently granted additional funding of €8.63 million for the Energy Sector Support Project (Pasec). That is all the subject of an agreement signed between the AfDB’s Deputy Director General for East Africa, Nwabufo Nnenna, and the Comoros’s Minister of Finance and Budget, Said Ali Said Chayhane, on the sidelines of the Bank’s Annual Meetings held on June 13, 2019 in Equatorial Guinea.
“We want to commend the efforts of the Development Bank. This additional funding for the energy sector will enable our country to address the challenges associated with it,” said Saïd-Ali-Saïd with satisfaction.
This support, approved by the AfDB Board of Directors on May 21, 2019, is in addition to the initial contribution approved in September 2013 and brings the Bank’s total contribution to the project to €25.22 million.
The Comoros Energy Sector Support Project consists of developing renewable energies (thermal, solar and hydroelectric), renovating and improving hydroelectric and diesel thermal power plants and developing the electricity transmission network in three islands of the archipelago, namely Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli.
The Comoros want to emerge from dark nights
The AfDB’s support to the Comoros’s energy sector is certainly a ray of hope for people who are regularly plunged into darkness due to a lack of electricity. The head of communication for Mamwe, the Comorian water and electricity company, speaking in the columns of the local daily newspaper, mentioned a cash flow problem considered insufficient to meet local energy demands. “The price of fuel at 400 francs per litre, or 0.81 €, is too expensive for Mamwe,” he explains.
With the amount of energy that the state-owned company can currently afford, the power supply can only be provided from 3 to 5 p.m. every day for the capital, compared to 4 hours every other day for the rest of the island.
Hence the opportunity for AfDB support to the Comoros Energy Sector Support Project. It will provide the country with an additional 20,000 kilowatts of electrical energy from renewable sources.
The Energy Sector Support Project is in line with the priorities defined in the Comoros Country Strategy Paper, the New Energy Pact for Africa and the Comoros Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development Strategy (SCA2D) for the period 2018-2021.
Boris Ngounou