Mr Charles J. Cormier, the Practice Manager of Energy and Extractive division of the World Bank has told the press that Gambia is currently among four West African countries that are working to meet the universal access to electricity target by 2025. He observed that in the National Development Plan (NDP 2018- 2021), energy is categorised as “a priority sector” in the context of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2030).
The World Bank official said this on Thursday, February 6th, when he paid courtesy call on President Adama Barrow. He was accompanied to the State House by the Managing Director of NAWEC, Mr. Alpha Robinson.
Mr Cormier recalled that when he visited The Gambia in 2017, there was crisis in the electricity sector, which he observed to have improved and that he is in Banjul to take stock of progress registered since then. “In 2017, after the change of regime, there was a lot of power cuts, which happened 16 to 18 times a day. The electricity that was availability at the time was only 25 megawatts on a grid that had a demand of up to 100 megawatts at the time”.
He attested that NAWEC faced a lot of criticisms because of the frequent power cuts in the country but that it came up with an emergency plan that development partners, donors and the government of President Adama Barrow invested in. “[Hence] NAWEC is doing a good work to bring back the reliability of the service”.
Mr Charles Cormier disclosed that President Barrow informed him that beside access, there is also the issue of cost of electricity for average Gambians. “The Gambia currently pays 23 cents on average, while the US pays 12 cents on average for electricity. This pricing also impedes competitiveness of the economy if electricity”.
He further revealed that the President has also urged the World Bank to help NAWEC build local capacity to effectively manage the state company.
Already, he disclosed, the Bank has invested $175million in the National Energy Investment Plan, out of a $400million planned budget.