A consortium led by French construction company, VINCI Construction, has signed a $470-million contract with the Gambia River Basin Development Organization to build the Sambangalou dam.
The Organization – in which The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal are member countries – will work with VINCI to construct a 91m high dam with a capacity of 128 MW, located in the southeast of the country and close to the Guinean border.
The dam aims to provide renewable energy, supply clean drinking water to local communities in the region and improve irrigation systems on farmland. Construction is expected to begin in the first half of 2021, and approximately 1,000 people will be employed by the project and trained locally.
Electricity produced by the dam will be connected to the national grid of all four countries of the Organization, whereby VINCI Energies is installing several hundred kilometers of high voltage lines.
The consortium comprises subsidiaries of VINCI Construction (75%) and an Austrian turbine manufacturer, Andritz (25%) as a partner.
