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France and the World Bank will lend Euros 344 million to Angola to help connect the provinces of Benguela, Huambo, Huila and Luanda to the national electricity grid. The southern African country is aiming to electrify 60% of the villages by 2025. The beneficiaries of the project include households, industries, businesses and small to medium sized enterprises. Better access to cheaper, more reliable and sustainable electricity can lead to not only better quality of life but also greater degree of industrialization.
Angola faces inadequate supply of electricity and piped water , which are the impeding factors in its drive towards industrialization. Investors, often, are shy of investing in that country. Only one third of the population has access to electricity. The project is aiming to modernize and expand the electricity network in the four biggest provinces of Angola. Along with that, performance of the public sector in energy will be improved. Presently, three public companies are involved in the production, transport and distribution sector. The government is setting up a project management unit at the Ministry of Water and Energy that will supervise the technical issues in the three public companies in the sector.
Under the plan, the government will unbundle generation, transmission and distribution as is done by countries, which have carried out the power sector reforms. The move is aimed at eliminating waste and to achieve efficiency. The transmission lines will be expanded from the present 2850 kilometers to 15,600 kilometers by 2025. The lines will have the load factors of 60 Kilovolts, 220 kilovolts and 400 kilovolts.
France also will help Angola to transform its rural areas Paris byfunding projects delivering piped water to small towns. Angola’s urban centers, though are expanding fast are not properly planned and lack social amenities. Presently, French cooperation supports projects in Angola linked to rural development and the extension of the urban water network. Approximately 900,000 inhabitants have been benefited from these projects.
