“Nachtigal Will Be The Biggest Power Plant In The Country”

Can you give us an overview of the Nachtigal hydroelectricity project?
The project has several components - at least three major components. We have the construction of a dam on River Sanaga with a capacity of the dam and power plant being 420 megawatts. Nachtigal will be the biggest power plant in the country. The second component will be a transmission line with a total length of 50km. It will run from Nachtigal to Yaounde, precisely Nyom II. The third component will be the construction of a house estate in Batchenga where the operations team will live once the dam becomes functional. So, these are the three industrial components. But when you are talking of the whole project, there is also the environmental and social aspects. So, it is very hard to summarise an incredible amount of action plans dedicated to environment, social aspects, health, archeology, economic development and so on. One of the purposes of this project is for it to be really dedicated to sustainable development.

At what stage is work on the project site in Ndokoa?
Works started from the beginning of March. Let’s go back a bit to the previous stages of the project. We achieved the financial closure of the project at the end of December 2018. It was a very important moment because we passed from the development phase to the construction phase. After that I sent the notice to proceed to the various EPCs Engineering, Procurement and Construction in February and the site works began in March. By June, we had already started working on two of the three sites. On the dam area, we have started the land clearing and surfacing. Works are going on smoothly. In the house estate it is almost the same situation and we will start to build in a couple of weeks. For the transmission line, the geo-technical inquiries have started, but not the works.

What is the size of the work force which has been deployed on the ground? 
By the end of June 2019, we had 450 employees on the ground working for the EPCs and sub-contractors. We are just at the beginning of the works. We are expecting a peak number of about 1,050, including the EPCs, owner’s engineers and the NHPC.

How is the relationship between the NHPC and the local population around the project area?
When you are at the head of such a project based on sustainability and sustainable development, it is very important to have a positive and concerted relationship with all the stakeholders. Of course, the local content of the project is very important to achieve results. That is why in Nachtigal, since the very beginning, all shareholders are very concern with getting high-level local content. We started to build the relationship right from the development phase of the project. We are treating in a very professional way sensitive aspects of social projects like the payment of compensation.

Let’s talk a bit about NHPC’s corporate social responsibility. Your company had signed a convention with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to boost the capacity of youths around the project area, amongst...