Gabon hydropower project receives €180m Chinese boost

Chinese energy firm TBEA will invest in a 180 million euro ($209 million) hydropower project in Gabon alongside the Central African country’s sovereign wealth fund, a Gabonese official said on Saturday.

Construction will begin “pretty soon” on the project, which will have a power generation capacity of 70 megawatts in the first phase, Liban Soleman, general coordinator of the Bureau of Coordination and Planning for an Emerging Gabon, told Reuters in an interview in Beijing.

“There are going to be multiple phases,” said Soleman, who is in the Chinese capital for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, adding that the project, known as FE2, was located in the north of Gabon near the border with Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

The investment by TBEA, a private company involved in wind power in China and solar power in Pakistan, according to its website, will be “direct .. not with debt”.

The website said TBEA saw the deal as a public-private partnership with the Gabonese Strategic Investment Fund. TBEA could not immediately be reached for comment outside of normal working hours.

Gabon, a member of OPEC, pumping just under 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day and one of the world’s biggest producers of manganese, is working to diversify its economy, which is projected to grow by around 2.2 percent this year, said U.S.-educated Soleman, who also chairs Gabon’s National Agency for Investment Promotion.