Umeme announces grid invesment package
Uganda’s sole electricity distributor, Umeme Limited, has announced plans to spend $83 million on projects to boost grid capacity and quality throughout 2020.
The investments will help the firm distribute more power from a new hydropower plant being built by Chinese firm Sinohydro on the Nile river, which is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2021.
“We need to increase the network capacity to deliver this power to end users,” Umeme CEO Selestino Babungi told a news conference.
The East African nation has sufficient power supplies but consumers routinely suffer from outages caused by breakdowns along the aged and fragile distribution infrastructure.
Umeme, which is listed on both the Ugandan and Kenyan stock exchanges, will construct new, high voltage lines and switching stations to make power supplies more stable, Babungi said.
When the new Karuma hydro power dam comes online, it will increase Uganda’s generation capacity to more than 1,800 megawatts.
The government plans to drive up access to electricity to 60% of the population by 2027 from the current 25%.
Source: Reuters
Photo (for illustrative purposes): Power electricity line / 41330 / Pixabay / Free for commercial use
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