The Head of State, President Paul Biya, poses the foundation stone at the project site on Friday.

All is set at the little locality of Nyabisan, the site to host the multi-billion Memve'ele Hydroelectric Power Project where the Head of State, President Paul Biya will today officially give the green light for the construction of the dam to begin. The ceremony that will not only consist in posing the foundation stone for the project, equally symbolizes the excellent and growing cooperation ties between Cameroon and China, the latter for which its company, SINOHYDRO Corporation Limited will effectively build the dam.

All that is necessary to make today's ceremony eventful have been put in place. The main grand stand estimated at 1,000 places and two subsidiary ones at about 500 places each have been setup and a temporary Presidential lounge put up. The ceremonial ground is spacious enough to receive thousands of people who could turn out to witness the event. To ensure live coverage of the ceremony, the Ministry of Communication has put up two giant screens in strategic corners.

The mobilization is rife and readily translates the magnitude of the project. In effect, the Memve'ele Hydroelectric project is one of the major energy boosting projects which the Head of State has in several of his speeches underscored as a solid base on which the country's economy lies. The socio-economic ramifications of the project leave no one indifferent. While it is evident that the Hydroelectric Dam project will in particular transform the Ntem Valley Division into an Eldorado, it is equally assuring that it will inject additional 201 megawatts of electricity into the south interconnected grid with an annual production of 1,140 GWh. Thanks to the Memve'ele project, a major road construction project is underway to link the project site to the Ebolowa-Ambam road and is progressing at lightning speed. This is expected to be completed in the shortest possible time to enable the transportation of heavy duty machines to the project site.

With an overall cost of FCFA 420 billion, the project is jointly financed by Eximbank China through a FCFA 243 billion loan solely for the construction of the dam and FCFA 112 billion from the African Development Bank for the putting in place of other components of the project. The rest is made available by the government of Cameroon.

When completed, the Hydroelectric Dam project will possess the following components among others: a dam, headrace channel, intake tower, secondary dam, living camp for contractors, homogeneous earth dam, power house, tail race tunnel, and tail race outlet.