A French consortium including Akuo and Sagecom has built a 30 MW solar power plant in Niger. The European Union, the French Development Bank and the Government of Niger contributed to the financing of the installation.
Located about 10 kilometers from the capital Niamey, the plant was developed as part of the improvement of the city’s electricity distribution under the auspices of the national electricity company Nigelec.
The production in the first year will be 53 GWh and it will be fed into Nigelec’s network. The project received 30 million euros. Nigelec said 55,608 polycrystalline modules were used for the fixed structures.
In 2020, Niamey’s electrification rate was 92.95%, according to data from the National Statistics Office. However, the city suffers from a decrease in load despite the expansion of heat production capacity in 2017. At the national level, electrification will rise to 15.72 percent in 2020, and the difference between rural and urban areas is large.
To strengthen its production capacity, Niger raised 129 million euros for solar energy projects from the African Development Bank last year.
