Nigeria's capital city Abuja looks to hydropower

The Nigerian government has finally sanctioned the development of the Mambilla hydro scheme in Taraba State in eastern Nigeria, on the border with Cameroon. With generating capacity of 3,050 MW, it will be the biggest hydro project on the African continent outside Ethiopia.

China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) has been named as the main contractor on the $5.8 billion venture. Construction and engineering work is expected to take six years and should begin after Abuja secures its share of financing.

The project, which involves the construction of four dams on the Donga River, was originally proposed in 1982 and has been reawakened on several occasions since then. Several preliminary agreements were signed with developers, but little actual work was undertaken. In 2012, Nigeria's Ministry of Power awarded Sinohydro a contract to develop the project, but it was cancelled just one year later, apparently because of difficulties in securing funding.

It is entirely possible that the venture will once again disappear without trace, but the structure of the new agreement suggests otherwise.

CCECC has already brought Chinese financing on board. China's Export-Import Bank will provide 85% of the total costs, with the Nigerian federal government supplying the remaining 15%.

In addition, the motivation for Chinese firms developing big infrastructure projects in Africa has strengthened in recent years. While Beijing has encouraged Chinese investment to increase its own influence on the continent, the desire of Chinese construction companies to be involved has risen as the pace of infrastructural development has dropped off in China itself.

Building projects such as Mamilla or Kenya's new standard gauge railway enables Chinese companies to maintain the scale of their operations. As a result, proposed jumbo construction projects are more likely to be built now than at any time since the post-independence euphoria of the 1960s.

Environmental campaign groups are divided over the project. Some praise the impact it will have in terms of providing low carbon electricity. Others fear the consequences of flooding on the Donga Valley, that inadequate compensation will be given to those affected, and that the scheme will create plenty of scope for corruption.

But at least in terms of electricity generation, 3 GW of hydro would certainly make a welcome addition to Nigeria's chronically in deficit power system, even if it takes six years or more to arrive.

Successive governments have depended on the development of a raft of gas-fired power plants. Some have actually been completed, but gas supply is incredibly unreliable because of the dysfunctional nature of the Nigerian gas industry and militant attacks on pipelines.

Abuja's dreams of nuclear energy seem like pie in the sky, although solar PV holds a great deal of promise. As the biggest source of untapped hydro potential in the country, Mambilla thus appears to offer a real alternative to utility-scale power generation beyond gas-fired plants.