By: Kemo Kanyi
President Adama Barrow last Thursday inaugurated the electricity transmission and distribution modernization project for the Greater Banjul Area (GBA)as part of activities, marking the Gambia’s diamond jubilee.
This energy infrastructure aims to end interrupting, costly, and unsustainable electricity supply across the length and breadth of the country.
The President described the state-of-the-art facility as a very crucial project in the history of the country.
“As spelt out in our Strategic Electricity Roadmap (2021-2040), this commitment to the energy sector will continue relentlessly until the whole country has access to uninterrupted, affordable, and sustainable power supply. Recognising the significant role energy plays in a country’s development and modernization drive, my government has, since 2017, strategically prioritised and hugely invested in our energy sector. These eight years of commitment and investment in the sector have yielded high dividends, noting that we now enjoy more stable power supply, compared to the past,” the President stated in his inaugural speech in a ceremony held at Salagi.
He noted that since attaining independence in 1965, the country’s transmission network was limited to 33 Kilo Volts, adding that as he spoke, this has been modernised and upgraded to 225 Kilo Volts. He cited, “This makes the occasion very historic indeed.”
“In the sixty (60) years of the Gambia’s political history as a sovereign state, this is the first national high voltage transmission line linked to a national control centre and a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. For various reasons, this is worth celebrating. The project will transform the country’s power supply system from an analogue system to a digital system. It will also make the power supply system much more robust and resilient, thus enhancing efficient communications and operation of the network. As the project lays the foundation for a national electricity grid, it will facilitate, as well, efficient transmission of huge volumes of power from one end of the country to another,” President Barrow explained.
He added that another very important benefit of this project is that it will inter-connect the country’s power supply system with the OMVG power transmission network and, eventually, with the larger West African Power Pool network, saying that this will enable The Gambia to export or import power from any country within the West African Power Pool. He continued: “The advantage is that it will further improve the country’s energy security system and create the opportunity to access the least costly power generation hubs within the ECOWAS sub-region. With determination, we will continue to strengthen and expand our electricity grid and access to attain our ambitious goal of Universal Access by end-2025. I assure you all that this goal remains very dear to my government, and it ranks high on our National Development Plan, ‘YIRIWA’.”
The President stated that as a nation, deriving maximum benefit from this vital infrastructure depends largely on how it is operated and maintained.
He called on the management and staff of NAWEC to not only efficiently operate and maintain it, but also jealously protect it for the benefit of the whole nation, stating that everyone must remember that the more digitised energy infrastructure is, the more vulnerable it is to cyber threats.
The Gambian leader registered deep gratitude to the European Union, the World Bank, and the European Investment Bank for providing the necessary financial resources for the project.