Vinci shifts into top gear on Sambagalou hydropower project

摘要

Vinci Construction Grands Projets, a subsidiary of French public works group Vinci, has asked Swiss firm Iota, which specialises in human resources management in Africa, to recruit a manager to oversee the construction of its 128-MW hydropower project on the Senegalese section of the Gambia River. The Vinci offshoot has been preparing the project, estimated to cost some $380m, with Austrian turbine manufacturer Andritz since 2018. The future dam, located near the town of Kédougou by the Guinean border, is part of a project led by the Gambia River Basin Development Organization, or OMVG. The governments of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau teamed up in the early 2000s to form this ambitious programme to interconnect their power grids and generate more power. OMVG was behind the construction of the Kaléta dam that sits 100 km north of the Guinean capital Conakry and that was inaugurated in 2015 by President Alpha Condé. Power from the two sites will be distributed across the grids of the four countries via a 1,677-km interconnection power line. This is being built by KEC International, an Indian electric power transmission specialist that has been expanding into West Africa in recent years.