Privately-owned British renewable power company Lekela expects the wind farm, located in Taiba Ndiaye, about 100 km from the capital Dakar, to reach 158.7 megawatts by 2020.
President Macky Sall is keen to make Senegal a leader in renewables in Africa, with a 30 percent target for clean energy in the coming years, of which this project will provide half. A smaller solar project underway aims to produce 30 megawatts. “On the environmental level, Senegal has never had a project on this scale,” said Massaer Cisse, Lekela’s Senegal head. “This farm will avoid … 300,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.”
A 200 billion CFA franc farm will be roughly half financed by Lekela, and the other half split between U.S.-based Overseas Private Investment Corp and Danish export credit company EKF.Renewables currently make up a tiny portion of Africa’s power generation, but several projects aim to increase that share. South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia are all developing industrial-scale wind farms.