Cote d'Ivoire is a net exporter of electricity and currently has installed electric generation capacity of 0.89 gigawatts. The use of gas-fired electricity plants has turned the country into a regional exporter of electricity. Some of the client-countries connected to the Ivoirian power grid include Benin, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana. Gas-powered stations generate more than half of the country's annual production. The first gas-fired plant, Vridi II, was built in the late 1995 near Abidjan. Another power station at Azito, in Abidjan's suburbs, began to supply electricity to the grid in 1999. The phased construction of a third turbine in Azito has been delayed pending a satisfactory rise in domestic and regional demand for electricity, through the West African Power Pool (WAPP), an extension of the national grid. Although they are no longer running at full capacity, hydroelectric plants (Ayame I and II, Kossou, Taabo, Buyo and Grah) still generate about 37% of the country's electricity. Fuel-powered individual generators are also widely used.
Electricity generation, transmission and distribution in the Ivory Coast is the responsibility of the Compagnie Ivorienne d'Electricité, known as CIE. The CIE, jointly owned by EDF and SAUR, has been trading with the Volta River Authority (Ghana) since February 1984 and exports electricity to Ghana, Togo and Benin.
Despite efforts to electrify rural areas, at least 7000 villages in Côte d'Ivoire are still without electricity.
The Ivory Coast has an economic hydro potential of around 2 000 MW and installed electric generation capacity of 1.2 gigawatts. The construction of more plants is planned.
Côte d’Ivoire’s distribution system comprises around 15 000 km of line, operating at 33 and 15 kV.
Demand for electricity in Cote d'Ivoire is expected to grow at about 10 percent per annum, with additional capacity required in the near future to match growth and replace obselete or inefficient equipment.
CIPREL (Compagnie Ivoirienne de Production d'Electricite), one of the first independent power producer (IPP) projects in sub-Saharan Africa, has been developed under the joint management of EDF and SAUR. The project has added an additional 210 MW of gas-fired generating capacity to the national grid.
In 1999 The Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) announced an investment of US$60 million in Cinergy, for the development of a gas fired plant at Azito, outside Abidjan. The Cinergy consortium consists of Swiss engineering firm, Asea Brown Boyeri (ABB), French electricity giant, EDF and Industrial Promotion Services (IPS), an affiliate of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development.
The Azito power plant is a US$223 million, 420 MW facility and is Cote d’Ivoire’s third thermal station. Financing has also been provided by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the African Development Bank (AfDB).
A project that aims to electrify 100 villages in Cote d’Ivoire has been awarded to Clemessy, a French electricity and transport company. As part of a rural electrification programme, rural communities are being connected to the distribution system, making increasingly large numbers of isolated diesel units obsolete.
In 1996 the French Development Fund, the Asian Development Bank and the European Investment Bank financed a 150 km interconnection project between Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast at an estimated cost of US$ 30 million. A feasibility study examining the linkage of the national grid to Mali was also completed.
A loan worth US$16.6 million by the Caisse Francaise de Developpement for a program to renovate the medium voltage grid is expected to be approved in principle. The project will be carried out under the auspices of the CIE.
