Morocco, Mauritania take next steps in grid interconnection

Morocco’s water and electricity agency ONEE and Mauritania’s electricity supplier SOMEC signed an agreement to connect their electricity grids.

The agreement was signed by head of ONEE Tarik Hamane with his counterpart Sidi Salem Mohaned Elabd in Nouakchott.

The project “is part of the Royal Atlantic initiative that aims at promoting African integration and south-south cooperation,” ONEE said in a statement.

The interconnection represents a “milestone” that will foster the reliability of the Moroccan and Mauritanian national grids, it said.

The project will also strengthen interconnections between Africa and Europe, it said, noting its beneficial impact on the integration of regional electricity grids.

The interconnection will help the two countries to build on their assets in terms of power generation, notably in terms of renewable energy, the statement said

Last month, Moroccan energy minister Leila Benali and her Mauritanian counterpart Mohamed Ould Khaled signed, in Rabat, a preliminary deal on the electricity link.

Besides electricity, Morocco agreed with Mauritania and Senegal to build a gas pipeline, the first phase in a larger project that is designed to channel Nigerian gas to Morocco and further to the European market.

The deal is conducive to electrification efforts in Mauritania, which seeks to benefit from Morocco’s experience in terms of electricity access.

In Mauritania, nearly half the population lacks access to electricity with wider gaps between urban and rural areas. Only 89% of urban population has access to electricity, compared to 4% in rural areas.

As of 2022, 100% of Morocco’s population had access to electricity.