The African Development Bank (AfDB), headquartered in Côte d'Ivoire, has approved a $303 million loan via its lending platform, the African Development Fund (ADF), for an electricity interconnection project between Mauritania and Mali. The funding supports the construction of a 1,500 kilometre-long, 225-kilovolt high-voltage power line connecting the two countries, alongside two 50-megawatt (MW) peak solar power plants in Mauritania. The power line, divided into three sections, that is, two in Mauritania and one in Mali, will have a transfer capacity of 600 MW, providing electricity to one hundred thousand households, eighty thousand in Mauritania and twenty thousand in Mali.
The project, with a total cost of $888 million, aligns with the Desert to Power initiative, aiming to harness the solar potential of the Sahel region and achieve a total installed capacity of 10,000 MW across eleven beneficiary countries, including Senegal, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.