TREASURES FROM OUR ARCHIVES: DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIA IN IVORY COAST - EQUIPMENT OF THE AYAME II WATERFALL

摘要

The Ivory Coast was first a French protectorate in 1843, and then became a French colony on 10 March 1893. The country acquired its independence on 7 August 1960, proclaimed by Félix Houphouët-Boigny, first president of the Ivory Coast Republic, whom his people would later call "the Old Man". At that time, in the early 1960s, the Ivory Coast experienced remarkable growth, with a 30% growth rate. Water and electricity needs grew in similar fashion. Equipment of the Ayamé II waterfall was the second and last stage in development of the Bia River which flows into the Gulf of Guinea. It is a buttressed multiple-arch dam, 35 metres high, with a 30,000 kW plant at its base containing two vertical-axis Kaplan turbine sets working under a 30-metre waterfall. The volume of the reservoir is 1.1 billion m~3. The average annual inflow is 2.5 billion m~3. On this structure, which would be commissioned in 1965, completing a development scheme for which the design engineering and works had begun well before independence, it is not surprising to find stakeholders such as Electricité de France as consulting engineer, the Séchaud engineering office, the civil engineering contractors Dumez and Borie, and the equipment suppliers Neyrpic, Ateliers des Forges de la Loire and Société Générale d'Entreprise, to mention only the best known. This was the end of the golden age of major works in what had been the French colonial empire.