Cameroon: GE to build new thermal electricity plant in Limbe

The Deputy Manager of Finagestion, GE’s French partner, signed an agreement on Wednesday 23 April in Yaoundé with Minister of Energy and Water Resources Basile Atangana Kouna. The deal authorises Finagestion to build a 314 MW thermal electricity plant in the Atlantic coastal town of Limbe in South-West Region. The plant will be run by gas-fired generators fuelled by Cameroon’s large gas reserves in and around the South-West oil and gas basins.

According to the terms of the accord, Finagestion will conduct a detailed study within 24 months dealing with, among other matters, the cost of the project and the compensation for the affected population. Through Kouna, the government has promised that it will facilitate the smooth functioning of the feasibility studies.

The project falls in line with the government’s plan to lift the country’s electricity production by 3,000 MW by 2020. Many heavy industries have been laden by low electricity supply despite President Biya’s ambition to take the country from a developing nation to an emerging economy by 2035. Observers have repeatedly warned that despite endemic corruption and administrative red-tape, Cameroon could still make great industrial strides with sufficient energy supplies, especially because the country has huge gas reserves and the plants to complement hydroelectricity with thermal power supply from gas-fired generators.

For more news and expert analysis about Cameroon, please see Cameroon Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Cameroon: Former president Ahmadou Ahidjo's daughter joins the CPDM to contest a parliamentary seat

For the past two decades, the family of Cameroon's first post- independence president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, has openly resisted joining President Biya's side. He was the man who peacefully succeeded their father in 1982, but then countered him in the 1984 coup and later condemned him to death for treason.

 

Biya's administration has also been vacillating on the question of Ahidjo's mortal remains being returned from Senegal so he could have a funeral that was worthy of such a statesman. His widow, Germaine Ahidjo, has never succeeded in realising this dream for which she has pressed since her husband died.

 

Events that unfolded last weekend showed, however, that the Ahidjo family is either openly divided and has unavoidably succumbed to Biya's grisly longevity in power, or was seeking a new tactic to penetrate the inner circles of a dangerous “enemy”.

 

So, having concluded that Biya has built an insurmountable political fortress, similar to that initially erected by her own father, the former president's youngest daughter, Aminatou Ahidjo, officially aligned herself with the CPDM in a flamboyant fashion on Friday 6 September. Clad in traditional CPDM regalia she was received by the CPDM Secretary-General Jean Nkuete at the party hall's esplanade in Yaounde. The solemn ceremony showed Nkuete flanked by his deputy Grégoire Owona and the party's Communication Secretary Jacques Fame Ndongo alongside other top officials who had come to receive the august guest.

 

For more news and expert analysis about Cameroon, please see Cameroon Politics & Security.

 

© 2013 Menas Associates