Dam On Gambia River – Vinci to build €388m Sambangalou hydropower
A consortium led by France’s Vinci Construction has signed a €388m contract to build the Sambangalou hydropower dam in Senegal for the Gambia River Basin Development Organisation, which involves four countries: The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal.
Located in southeast Senegal near the Guinean border, the 91m-high dam on the Gambia River will have a generating capacity of 128MW and will improve farmland irrigation and supplying drinking water for surrounding districts. The reservoir it will create extends into Guinea.
The contract signing followed an 18-month phase of studies and preparations.
Vinci said work will begin in the first half of 2021 and is scheduled to last 48 months. At its peak, the project will employ 1,000 people recruited and trained locally.
Once complete, worksite buildings will be donated to schools. In addition, engineers from the consortium will teach classes at the Kédougou technical high school in Senegal.
The electricity generated by the dam will be injected into the grids of the four participating countries, for which Vinci will install several hundred kilometres of high voltage lines.
The consortium is composed 75% of Vinci subsidiaries and 25% of Andritz, an Austrian turbine manufacturer.
This will destroy farming as we know it today in The Gambia. Irrigation from salt water?
Am not sure why we should agree to this as it will benefit Senegal and ruin The Gambia as the fresh non salty water from Futa Jallon will be blocked and cause untold environmental damage to our waters and the surrounding villages.
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270 to 280km away from The Gambia.! According to the headline, the Dam will be built in Kedougou, which means from the main source of the river is in Labe (Conakry), then the river Gambia flows through Senegal’s agrarian Parc Nacional De Niokolo-Koba (from Kedougou to Mako, Sementi, Wassadou, Kaor Mbaye Lari then through Goulombou) before it reaches to The Gambia.
If you travel through the river Gambia from Banjul up to Dindefello in Kedougou region of Senegal you will understand the point I’m trying to make.
Labe is where the main source of river Gambia flows but there are many more sources; for instance, in Dindefello there are two giant water falls that both flows to the river Gambia. Their sources are both uphill at a village called Dande — meaning the Dam can cause the rise of Salt water towards CRR and URR where farmers use the fresh water from the river through an irrigation system.
If this idea helps Senegal more and is going to cause more harm to The Gambia, we should never accept it.
I fully agree with Kejau..
Another ripoff
If what you just account here how can both or the several fresh water sources be block from flowing into river Gambia???
This will be an environmental catastrophe!
Why A Dam?
Is it all about: “I did or brought so and so during my tenure of office”? If that’s the answer, then you are surely doing more harm than good.