The Bumbuna hydroelectric dam, valued at over $200 million, began supplying power to parts of Sierra Leone in September (Sierra Leone Gets Taste of Hydropower) after a 30-year construction period and residents are beginning to feel the benefits. Most of $35.6 million of the $44.5 million needed to complete the project came from the Italian and Sierra Leonean governments as well as the UK Department for International Development, according to the African Development Bank.
One Freeport local, Abdul Kamara said, “We had 24-hour lights as soon as Bumbuna was switched on when before we didn’t have lights because [Freetown] had transformer problems.”
The UNDP said that only 12% of people in the western urban region of Sierra Leone, including Freetown, have access to electricity. Most people use wood and coal for generators which costs from $75 to several hundred dollars depending on the size and quality of the product. In addition, diesel to fuel the generators ranges from $3 to $4 a gallon. Therefore, the country’s president Ernest Bai Koroma made energy a priority after taking office in 2007.
Sierra Leone falls into what Alternative Energy Africa classifies as the Northwest Bend – which also includes Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, and Senegal. Even with significant crude discoveries in Ghana and limited finds in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, these countries must look to different methods to generate energy.
At the beginning of 2009, Koroma announced the start of a $200-million renewable energy project that would employ more than 4,000 residents at Lungi Acre. Later in August the Japan International Cooperation Agency worked with the country’s Ministry of Energy and Water Resources and National Power Authority to host a workshop on the master plan on power supply in the country in order to educate residents and business owners. In his keynote address, the Energy Minister Ogunlade R. Davidson said that the ministry will work on different methods to aid the overall energy policy of the country and that if successfully implemented, the plan would transform the energy landscape of the country, enabling it to have the capabilities to reach its millennium goals by 2015.
There are still occasional power outages, but they may last a few hours compared to the sometimes days before Bumbuna came online. Kamara said that he paid nearly $25 to receive power for the month of December as the power generation works on a pre-paid meter system, and the National Power Authority admitted that more people are crowding the office to pay for their free-flowing current.
Although it is still considered expensive for many people to get connected, the government plans to lower the fees once more people are on board. The Bumbuna plant currently provides Freetown residents with 26 MW of power regularly.