The Minister of Energy and Hydraulics, Emile Ouosso, signed, on July 17 in Brazzaville, with the First Vice-President of the State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) of the Russian Federation, Nikolay Spasskiy, two Memorandum of understanding covering, among other things, the development of micro and hydroelectric power stations as well as the installation of a unit for producing electricity from controlled civil nuclear power.
The first memorandum of understanding signed between the Republic of Congo and the Russian Federation concerns cooperation in the field of energy and hydraulics and adjacent sectors. The second concerns cooperation in the field of peaceful use of atomic energy. “We are very proud to sign these agreements because today is a sufficiently important day for cooperation between the Republic of Congo and the Russian Federation in the field of renewable energy, hydraulics and nuclear energy ,” Nikolay Spasskiy rejoiced.
Indeed, the signing of these memoranda of understanding marks an important step in relations between the two countries, thus opening up promising prospects for the development of the Congolese energy sector. The Minister of Energy and Hydraulics, Emile Ouosso, recalled that these agreements follow the meetings that the President of the Republic, Denis Sassou N’Guesso, had with Rosatom officials in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, during his recent state mission to Russia. He thus stressed the need to produce the planned 2.6 megawatts very quickly in order to meet the needs of the Congolese.
Minister Emile Ouosso also met with the CEO of 3PRS, Patrick de Pacheteteyre. The discussions focused on the installation of a renewed drinking water treatment unit and the extension of the La Congolaise des eaux (LCDE) network in the city of Pointe-Noire. The aim is to provide sustained drinking water supply to neighborhoods that lack it. “The purpose of the working session was to announce the arrival of the closing at the end of the year for the Pointe-Noire project, as the World Bank still has some studies to complete for its implementation.
The start of work is scheduled for January 2025 and we will be able to benefit from the production of drinking water at the end of 2025. Regarding the project, it is a drinking water production station with a capacity of 1,500 m3 that will operate 22 hours a day; “There are also nearly 60 km of network planned in the project: transfer network and distribution network ,” explained Patrick de Pacheteteyre, specifying that for the production part, the duration of the works is planned for one year and for the network part eighteen months.
3PRS will be responsible for the development and operation of new drinking water production infrastructure from Lake Gambouissi, located in the department of Pointe-Noire. The general manager of LCDE, Parfait Chrysostome Makita, was pleased that we are moving towards the culmination of a long process that began in 2019 to provide a drinking water solution to Pointe-Noire. According to him, everyone is aware of the fact that there is a huge deficit in the production of drinking water in this city.
“Today, we can only be satisfied with this news that has been awaited for a very long time. This news from our partner announces, in our opinion, a rather very positive development for Pointe-Noire which will also benefit very soon from a water infrastructure worthy of the name. All the studies have already been done, we know that a drinking water treatment unit will be installed, a network will be laid over nearly 400 km for renewal and extension in the city of Pointe-Noire, but also connections will be made. It will be a structuring project that will be installed on all the works” , he commented.
