West African Power Pool Commissions 21st General Assembly in Conakry to Interconnect Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mano River Grid

CONAKRY, GUINEA — Energy ministers and utility chief executives representing the 14 national power authorities within the West African Power Pool (WAPP) have convened in Conakry for the 21st WAPP General Assembly, marking the technical operationalization of the CLSG (Côte d'Ivoire-Liberia-Sierra Leone-Guinea) cross-border transmission backbone.

The integrated 225-kilovolt transmission line allows the surplus output of Guinea's Souapiti and Kaleta hydroelectric cascades to flow dynamically into Sierra Leone's industrial mining grids and Liberia's coastal agro-processing clusters during the high-water wet season. Conversely, during low hydrological periods, natural gas-fired combined-cycle plants in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana will wheel baseload power northward.

Secretary General of WAPP Siengui Ki Apollinaire underscored that the regional interconnection directly addresses West Africa's persistent industrial tariff disadvantage. 'By trading power across sovereign borders within a single interconnected dispatch center, member states are lowering production tariffs from 28 cents per kilowatt-hour down to an average of 11 cents,' Apollinaire confirmed.

The assembly also reviewed financing for the second phase of the median North-South corridor, which will integrate the solar fields of Burkina Faso and Mali into coastal load centers in Togo and Benin before 2028.