Guinea : Electricité de Guinée

Guinean’s national power utility, Electricité de Guinée (EDG), is responsible for providing power generation, transmission, and distribution services across the country. However, electricity distribution under EDG suffers from weak governance, old infrastructure, poor maintenance of assets, frequent blackouts, high electricity theft rates and losses, poor billing and collection rates, and overall poor financial performance. To help address this, the Government of Guinea hired IFC as the lead advisor to structure a performance-based public-private partnership (PPP) for EDG. The consortium Veolia-Seureca won the bid for a 4 year performance-based management contract, and the PPP agreement was signed in June 2014 despite significant challenges posed by the Ebola epidemic, which was at its peak during this time. The private operator will provide EDG with experienced staff to oversee operations, experts to bring complementary expertise to specific projects, such as IT systems, and much needed improvements in EDG’s operational performance. Veolia and EDG staff will work closely together to achieve the key performance indicators that have been set in the contract. It is expected that the improved services, for nearly 300,000 households by the end of the contract, will increase the quality and reliability of power services in Guinea.