A widespread outage affects Senegal’s US-funded electricity grid

Senegal’s power utility Senelec stated in a statement that a power plant accident in the country’s capital led to a statewide blackout of energy on Thursday.

In 2018, the United States made a commitment of more than half a billion dollars to rebuild Senegal’s electrical grid as part of an agreement to increase access to dependable power.

According to Senelec, the incident at the 90,000-volt Hann station caused a larger outage on an interconnection grid, which interfered with the delivery of electricity throughout the nation.

It provided no other information regarding the mishap.

Senegal has implemented reforms and made significant investments in production and transmission to increase power supply in the wake of a serious power crisis ten years ago that closed down companies and sparked violent protests.

Senegal will receive $550 million from the United States in 2018 to expand access to inexpensive and dependable electricity. For the $600 million program, the government committed to contribute $50 million.

The outage was a reflection of the country’s persistent power problems in West Africa. A request for comment regarding the outage was not answered by a representative for the US embassy in Senegal.

Parts of the city, Dakar, as well as other regions were progressively regaining power, the utility said in a statement to Reuters.