AYV News, March 5, 2025
Energy Sector Lead, Dr. Kandeh Yumkella, has attended a stakeholders community engagement meeting with respect to the Nant Power Generation Project at Kissy, Eastern Freetown, to discuss matters of critical importance to the project and to have a first-hand assessment of endeavours aimed at putting together the first-ever gas power generation plant that could significantly transform the country’s energy landscape.
It could be recalled that, on June 18, 2024, His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio, at a ground-breaking ceremony at Kissy, launched Sierra Leone’s first gas power generation plant, stating at the ceremony that the project will promote reliable access to electricity across the country.
Dr. Yumkella thanked the management of Nant for defying the odds and for persevering to get the project started. He described the project as a game-changer, noting that President Bio’s visionary leadership style continues to attract credible investors and investments to the country.
He spoke about concrete steps taken by the sector to realize the energy sovereignty aspirations of His Excellency while calling on the management of Nant to ensure they keep to the project completion timeline.
“My own role is to ensure that every bottleneck or barrier that causes delays is removed with the view to accelerating project implementation. We will do our best to ensure that these barriers are eliminated.
“Such a project fits into the description of our long-term policy and strategy which we are pursuing diligently,” he said while noting that the 420 million dollar investment is the largest DFC financed project in Africa.
Dr. Yumkella said he will be traveling to the United States of America with DFC to make a case for the country in terms of additional investments. He spoke about conscious efforts to reform EDSA and called on the community to own and protect the project.
Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Security,Mohamed Rahman Swarray, said he was excited to be part of the stakeholder engagement. He praised the project team for their honesty in recognizing those who had played critical roles in getting the project to where it is now.
Mr. Swarray said as the person who looks after the employment landscape of the country, he was at the project site because he wanted to ensure Sierra Leoneans were employed by the company. He noted that he was treating the job creation aspect of the project with seriousness.
Chairman Parliamentary Committee on Energy, Hon. Kekura Vandi, praised the former Minister of Energy, Alhaji Dr Kanja Sesay, for pioneering the ratification of the project in parliament. He spoke about the challenges associated with the quest to provide reliable and affordable electricity but assured that the Nante project will prove monumentally useful and impactful.
General Manager of Nant Energy, Abu Kamara, went through the project update and also spoke about the environmental,social, health and impact assessment.
“If you came back here in the next three months, this place would be completely different. We are going to start the foundational works. This requires coordination and collaboration,” he said. With the energy sector and the Feed Salone agenda being inextricably linked, reforms continue in the sector.
