Usman Gur Mohammed

The West Africa Power Pool (WAPP) has identified 75 regional priority projects to be executed at an estimated total investment requirement of $36.39 Billion targeted at reducing energy cost and increasing access within the sub-region.

The Chairman of the WAPP Executive Board, Usman Gur Mohammed, who disclosed this at the on going 14th session of WAPP General Assembly in Abuja with the theme, “ECOWAS regional electricity market: Today and future opportunities”, lamented that presently West Africa has the highest cost of energy all over the world.

He said that WAPP with the help of the European Union, has developed an updated ECOWAS master plan for the development of regional power generation and transmission infrastructure within the period 2019-2033.

The projects set to be executed within the timeframe and estimated required investment cost include: 28 transmission line projects of approximately 22,932 km of high-voltage transmission lines at estimated cost of $10.48 Billion.

This involves transmission line projects that shall enable WAPP interconnect beyond its current area coverage -Northern Africa through Morocco, Central African Power Pool to Inga Dam.

Also, set out is the execution of 47 generation projects with a total capacity of approximately 15.49 GW at an estimated cost of $25.91 billion.

The generation projects comprise 31. 1 Percent thermal projects operating mainly with natural gas and 68.9 percent renewable energy projects (10.67 GW) of which 29.5 percent involves Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) projects (3.15 GW solar, wind).

While making opening remarks, the WAPP Chairman urged the delegates to the General Assembly to work hard to ensure that WAPP becomes a pacesetter and best in the entire Africa.

“We want to ensure that we realize what WAPP is set up for, that is to reduce the cost of energy and increase access to energy in West Africa, to make our people have abundant energy at a cheaper cost.

“West Africa as at today has the highest cost of energy all over the world and the objective of WAPP is to reduce the cost of energy.

“We can reduce cost of energy by ensuring that we eliminate emergency generation where countries establish generation through a very costly fuel system that increases the end user (consumer) costs”, he said.

On the 2019-2033 WAPP Generation and Transmission Master plan, he explained that the intention is to transmit energy from places that are cheap to where energy is expensive.

According to him, “As at today, Nigeria has comparative advantage and so energy should flow to countries where they have high cost of fuel.

“In doing that, we can create a lot of jobs for Nigerians and earn foreign exchange for this country. That is why Nigerians should support that drive. We launched the West African electricity market and so electricity should flow like commodity and have private sector come into it.”

On his part, the Secretary General, WAPP, Mr Sengui Ki Appolinaire said the General Assembly provides opportunity to recap activities of the year.

The Mainstream Energy Solutions Ltd Managing Director, Lamu Audu, maintained that globally, power utilities are privately owned and that was why government privatized the power sector to inject the needed efficiency.