In the Pointe-Noire region, localities are plunged into darkness despite the proximity of the towels, pipelines, power plants and high voltage lines.
Le Monde
A pipeline stretches just behind the houses, a high tension line passes over the dwellings, a cloth burns permanently … But the villages of the Pointe-Noire oil region, in Congo-Brazzaville, live in the black, for lack of being connected to electricity.
“I am 68 years old and I still live in the dark.” Florent Makosso ruminates his anger, installed on a lounge chair at the foot of a giant banana tree in Tchicanou, a town 40 km from Pointe-Noire, in the south of the country. Tchicanou, which means “bravery” in vili, the language of the terroir, extends on both sides of the national 1, which it overlooks in part. The village, immersed in the foliage of fruit trees, has just over 700 inhabitants.
Behind houses mainly built in planks are small bushes that separate them from pipelines from the transport of petroleum products, powered by power plants. Underground electricity cables are visible in certain places. Near there, a high voltage line passes over another village, leap.
But electricity does not arrive in the two localities, which are not better served than the most remote towns in the interior of the country. The only light to which their inhabitants are used to, 24 hours a day, it is the flame of a towel, symbol of the exploitation of gas which feeds the largest power plant in the Congo, with a capacity of 487 megawatts.
“It is a ordeal that we live here. We cannot even watch television. We are forced to buy generatorial groups that cost very expensive. And to feed them, it is not an easy task “, is sorry Florent Makosso, who does not have the possibility of keeping food in the cold. “Our televisions and other household appliances are ornamental objects,” he adds.
“is an injustice”
“Tchicanou is however a well -positioned village. But the flaked gas here only serves to pollute and cause us diseases”, deplores Flodem Tchicaya, another resident of Tchicanou. “The current! Instead that it starts with the base to go to the top, it begins with the summit and the base has nothing. It is an injustice”, storm Roger Dimina, 57, alluding to the oil platforms which are powered by the current while public and domestic lighting is lacking in the villages.
With an estimated population of 5 million inhabitants, Congo-Brazzaville officially produced 344,000 barrels of oil per day in 2021; A production that ranks it third in sub -Saharan Africa, behind Nigeria and Angola. According to hydrocarbon operators, the proven natural gas reserves would be around 100 billion cubic meters.
But all this potential does not really rhyme with the electrification of urban and rural areas, where the rate of access to electricity is estimated respectively at less than 40 % and less than 10 %. In a recent interview with the Brazzaville dispatches, the only daily newspaper in the Congolese capital, Emile Ouosso, Minister of Energy and Hydraulics, announced that he wanted to bring this rate to 50 % by 2030.
The Justice and Peace Commission (CJP), NGO close to the Catholic Church, has been leading a campaign called “Electricity for all” for some time to claim the electrification of the neighboring villages of Pointe-Noire. “We are questioning the government for the use of the superficial royalty [paid by oil operating companies] and the companies themselves […] to electrify the local communities,” said Brice Makosso, deputy coordinator of the Cjp.
According to him, the government has several strings to its bow to get the villagers out of darkness. “In 2022, the Government of Congo announced 700 billion CFA francs [more than 1 billion euros] surpluses of budgetary income,” he recalls, suggesting this sum “a small amount to electrify “The villages.