A Senegalese company is examining desalination as a solution to keep water supply flowing in the capital city of Dakar.
The city’s structural water problems came to a head during September last year when 40% of the city went without water for two weeks after a massive pipe burst. “Senegal needs to diversify its water sources to secure supply and anticipate growing demand due to rapid urbanisation,” explains Mamadou Dia, chief executive of Senegalaise des Eaux (SDE). Dia further outlines that with financing secured from Japan cooperation agency JICA, Senegal is to build a 100 000 m3 per day desalination plant by 2021. This equates to more than five times the current shortfall. SDE is to also bid in a tender for a second 50 000 m3/day plant with private financing. Despite last year’s water outage, SDE’s contract was renewed for another five years in December 2013 and its shareholders want it to expand further in Africa, where it currently competes with French water multinational Veolia.SDE is 57% owned by French utility group Eranove which supplies drinking water in both Senegal and Ivory Coast as well as power in West Africa.
Eranove itself is majority-owned by the Africa-focused Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) private equity fund. Construction firm Bouygues retains a 19% stake in Eranove. ECP co-chief executive Vincent Le Guennou says the group plans several other investments in the region, including small hydro dams in Mali and Ivory Coast, and gas-fired power plants in Cameroon and Ghana. “Our presence in Senegal and Ivory Coast is a platform to develop our business model across the region,” he maintains.
