Cameroon’s New Dam Will Provide 30% of the Country’s Energy Needs

Construction work on the Nachtigal Dam, Cameroon, is nearing completion.

It is an important strategic project for this country of equatorial Africa, which is developing a great potential for the production of clean energy, using the numerous rivers that characterize this state’s geography.

This is the case of a $1.2 billion project developed by Nachtigal Hydro Power Company (NHPC), a public-private partnership between the Republic of Cameroon, Electricité de France (EDF), International Finance Corporation (IFC), STOA, and AFRICA50. The Italian company ATB Riva Calzoni is also working on the project, installing forced pipelines and a complete set of hydromechanic equipment.

The plant creates a barrier on the Sanaga River near the Nachtigal Falls, about 60 km from the capital Yaounde. The plant has an installed capacity of 420 MW and will produce an average of 2.9 TWh, corresponding to about a third of the consumption of the South Cameroon interconnected grid. It is a real breakthrough for local energy stability.

But this is just the latest of Cameroon’s hydroelectric projects: just recently it completed the Memve’ele Dam on the Ntem River, in Nyabizan, a village in the south of the country, located 300 kilometers from Yaounde near the border with Equatorial Guinea.