West Africa: EDF experience to assist SENELEC in Senegal

By African Bulletin on December 21, 2010

In 2008, The National Electricity Company of Senegal (SENELEC) introduced a new pricing, costing 17% up on electricity bills for the consumers. The officials declared that the increase was inevitable because a ton of fuel oil passed from 80 000 FCFA in 2005 to 350 000 CFA on 2008. The compensation of the State was insufficient and SENELEC had been losing about 5 to 8 billion per month. In 2010, the successive shortages have plagued the nation’s economic activity over the past six months.

Between cash flow problems, lost orders, production shortfalls, additional overtime, delays in fulfilling orders, temporary destruction of equipment, loss of material and final penalties to pay, a study of the Directorate of Forecasting and Economic Studies (DPEE) revealed that the daily shortfall is 45854 CFA francs per day in the informal sector and 9.6 million CFA francs per day in the formal one. That is why the French EDF, the world leader in power generation, has finalized an agreement for technical cooperation with the National Electricity Company of Senegal (SENELEC), which is experiencing the worst energy crisis of its history . The agreement was signed in Paris by Karim Wade, the Senegalese Minister of Energy and the French EDF CEO, Henri Proglio. According to the document, SENELEC will be subject to a technical audit with the assistance of major international consulting cabinets to determine the causes of this long lasting dysfunctions that are plaguing  the country’s energy sector. In a second step, the Senegalese Ministry of Energy would consider spinning off SENELEC through the poles of transport, distribution and production, as well as important bidding, for international subsidiaries, will be launched in January 2011. The arrival of Cheikh Tidiane Mbaye, General -Director of SONATEL, a Senegalese subsidiary of France Telecom, is seen as a strong signal sent to the French companies specialised in the field of energy to bring added value and participate in the SENELEC contracting offers. Now the difficulty remaining is to convince the French investor to acquire a majority shareholding in this public company that have became a veritable billions’ abyss and  a Senegalese government’s puzzling activity. The energy crisis has already absorbed more than 800 billion CFA francs in terms of investment over the past ten years,  and the company has been unable to supply electricity properly to both the public and private service. This has pushed the State to make several changes the executive hierarchy chain of the national electricity company.