By Fatou Sillah
The National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC) has pushed back against criticism stemming from recent widespread power outages, with its spokesperson insisting the disruptions are not representative of the utility’s broader performance.
Speaking in an interview with Kerr Fatou, NAWEC spokesperson Buba Badjie argued that three weeks of electricity shortages should not overshadow what he described as years of measurable progress. “NAWEC was going very well. What happened in the past three weeks cannot be a judgment of what we were doing for the past three or four years. I think that is unfair to us,” he said.
Badjie pointed to the company’s investment in renewable energy as evidence of its advancement, highlighting the commissioning of a 23-megawatt solar plant—the first of its kind in the country’s history. He noted that an estimated 150 megawatts of solar capacity would be sufficient to achieve full national electrification, a target he says NAWEC is actively working toward.
On the immediate cause of the outages, Badjie cited technical maintenance on multiple generating units as a key contributing factor. “We have about three of our engines down on maintenance. It is beyond human control,” he said.
Looking ahead, he outlined plans to significantly expand the country’s generation capacity through a partnership with the World Bank, which is financing a 150-megawatt solar project. He added that a preliminary 50-megawatt phase of that project is in the final stages of contract signing.
Badjie also acknowledged a structural challenge facing the utility: electricity demand is outpacing current production capacity. “The demand is faster than what we even produce. As we speak, we are not able to generate half of our capacity,” he said, while maintaining that the company’s longer-term plans would address the gap.
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