Burkina Faso: Burkina Faso and Russia continue to strengthen ties
Burkina Faso Minister of Energy, Simon-Pierre Boussim, and the Deputy Director General of the Russian Atomic Energy Agency Rosatom, Nikolay Spasski, signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday in Moscow, as part of the Russian Energy Week.
This memorandum provides for the construction of a nuclear power plant in Burkina Faso, thus strengthening ties between the two countries. If this project goes ahead, it would be the second nuclear power plant in Africa, the only one currently located in Koeberg, South Africa.
The main objective of Burkina Faso in this initiative is to meet the energy needs of its population. By the end of 2020, the overall access rate to electricity in Faso was only 22.5%, with marked disparities between urban (67.4%) and rural (5.3%) areas, according to the African Development Bank. These figures indicate that less than a quarter of the population has access to electricity.
Currently, Burkina is offsetting its low level of solar and hydroelectric power generation with electricity imports from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The project to build the nuclear power plant could be supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of which Faso is a member.
