Infos Business of Wednesday, 4 February 2015

Source: Investir au Cameroun

Energy sector to benefit from Norwegian Fund

Norfund, Norwegian investment Fund dedicated to developing countries, announced on February 2, 2015, that it had bought 30% of the assets of CDC, the development agency belonging to the British Government, in the capital of Globeleq Africa, entity of British Actis investment fund, which controls several power plants in Africa.

These energy infrastructure include the Dibamba plant (88 MW) and the Kribi gas plant (216 MW) in Cameroon.

This transaction that allows Norfund to position itself in the Cameroonian energy sector through the entry into the capital of KPDC and DPDC, companies which manage the two above-mentioned plants, officially claimed 112.5 billion Cfa francs.

With a total production of 304 MW capacity, Cameroon is the main producer of the energy network of Globeleq Africa in the dark continent, before Ivory Coast (288 MW with the power plant Azito) and South Africa (three solar and wind plants with a global capacity of 238 MW).

Although nothing filter for now on projects to implement in the context of the partnership between Norfund and CDC, who, according to the two partners will lead to "more projects of construction of power plants" and "the addition of more than 5,000 MW of production capacity" in Africa; Cameroon may well be the beachhead of this alliance to increase the capacity of energy production on the dark continent.

However, KPDC is currently looking for 65 billion Cfa francs to finance the extension of the Kribi gas plant to increase its production of 216,330 MW.

Moreover, despite its hydroelectric potential, which is indeed the second in Africa behind that of the DRC, Cameroon is a vast field of fallow hydropower (several projects are pending funding), but more in the field of renewable energies such as solar and wind power.