Mali pressed to pay 'enormous' debt for regional dam, document says

Mali owes more than $94m (R1.7bn) to the entity managing a dam which also provides power to Senegal and Mauritania, and the debt has become "a question of life and death" for its ability to continue operating, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

The funding gap raises the spectre of more electricity supply problems in Mali, where outages in recent years have dented public support for the military government that took power following coups in 2020 and 2021.

The Manantali Dam and power plant came online in 2002 and has an installed capacity of 200 megawatts. More than half of what it produces goes to Mali while Senegal gets 33% and Mauritania gets 15%.

Mali currently owes "an enormous amount of more than 54-billion CFA francs [R1.69bn]" to SOGEM, the entity that manages Manantali and several other projects, according to an April 25 letter from SOGEM to the director-general of Energie du Mali, Mali's electric utility.

"It is now a question of life or death for our installations and for SOGEM," reads the letter signed by SOGEM's director-general, Mohamed Mahmoud Sid'Elemine.

It is unclear if the debt stems from Manantali or other costs. However, a source at the utility told Reuters most of the debt was racked up in the last year.

The utility did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter touts the Manantali project as a success story for regional cooperation that cost hundreds of billions of CFA francs to implement.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are members of the Alliance of Sahel States and announced last year they were leaving the West African economic and political bloc known as Ecowas.

Reuters