Burkina Faso and Russia continue to strengthen their ties: an agreement was signed on Friday for the construction of a nuclear power plant by Moscow in this Sahelian country where less than a quarter of the population has access to electricity. Burkina Faso, led by a military regime since last year, is seeking to diversify its partners and has notably moved closer to Russia.
“The government of Burkina Faso has signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction of a nuclear power plant,” he said in a press release. “The construction of this nuclear power plant aims to cover the energy needs of the populations,” the text continues.
The signing of this agreement took place on the occasion of the Russian Energy Week which was held in Moscow, in which the Minister of Energy of Burkina, Simon-Pierre Boussim, participated. On the Russian side, the document was signed by Nikolay Spasski, deputy director general of the nuclear agency Rosatom. “The memorandum constitutes the first document in the field of the peaceful use of atomic energy between Russia and Burkina Faso,” Rosatom said in a press release.
“Double production”
The document “comes to materialize the wish of the President of Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, expressed last July during the Russia-Africa summit during an interview with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin”, details the Burkinabè government. At the end of 2020, only 22.5% of Burkinabè people (67.4% in urban areas, 5.3% in rural areas) had access to electricity, according to figures from the African Development Bank.
“We plan, if we can, to build nuclear power plants by 2030, in order to solve the problem of the energy deficit,” Minister Boussim declared on Thursday, quoted by the Russian news agency TASS. “Our challenge is to double our electricity production by 2030, which will allow us to boost the industrialization of Africa,” he added.
Burkina Faso imports a large part of its electricity from neighboring Ivory Coast and Ghana and produces another part locally, mainly by hydroelectric or solar power. The African continent currently has only one nuclear power plant, in South Africa at Koeberg, near Cape Town. According to South African researcher specializing in nuclear structures, Iyabo Usman, Burkina Faso “does not have enough qualified personnel to operate this nuclear power plant” and will have to call on foreign personnel.
The country “could benefit from support from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)”, particularly financial, because it is one of the organization’s member states, adds the associate professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, located in Johannesburg.