ECOWAS seeks experts for clean energy corridor

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is looking to hire two consultants – a renewable specialist and a power system planning expert – to help steer the set-up of a solar corridor in the region.

Between April and June this year, the experts will produce a strategic plan on how to deliver the scheme, which aims to push solar capacity up to 2GW (2020) and 10GW (2030) across a vast swath of West Africa from Senegal to Nigeria.

This strategy will have to take into account all the components of this project, from production inclusion decisions to national electricity grids, fund mobilization mechanisms, to the respect of deadlines, among others.

The West Africa Clean Energy Corridor Initiative was developed on the strong political commitment of African leaders to strengthen regional generation and transmission infrastructure.

It provides a unique opportunity to complement other important conventional sources of power production such as large hydro and natural gas and also to foster regional power trade, experts say.

The “Solar Corridor” runs across a number of ECOWAS countries where the solar generation potential significantly exceeds local electricity requirements and where large-scale solar generation plants could be built at low generation costs, thus benefitting from economies of scale and high solar electricity generation potential.