Responding to comments Saidy made on Kerr Fatou, Njie said the argument that Karpowership was expensive and harmful to NAWEC’s finances ignores key issues of reliability, economies of scale, and infrastructure.
“As a former Country Manager for Karpowership and a citizen of The Gambia, I have closely followed the ongoing discourse regarding Karpower’s role in the national energy landscape. Having been on the inside of these operations, I believe it is time to set the record straight,” Njie said.
Mr Njie said comparing Karpowership to imports from Senelec or EDG is misleading.
“SENELEC can offer lower rates to NAWEC because they utilise a diverse energy mix where they benefit from sunk costs. Selling excess capacity to The Gambia is, for them, a source of marginal income. The infrastructure is already paid for,” he explained.
Njie said EDG’s hydro power is cheaper but “highly seasonal, often struggling to meet demand outside the rainy season.
In contrast, “Karpowership provides a dedicated, consistent baseline of power with an uptime guarantee of 95%. This level of reliability is crucial for supporting national development. Senelec nor EDG can give any reliability guarantees to NAWEC that are close to 60%,” Njie stated.
Njie also cited NAWEC’s generation gap: “NAWEC struggled to operate its generators, not even 20MW of their own 70MW+ installed capacity, a figure that has only recently improved to approximately 30MW. Reliability has a price, and that price is often lower than the systemic cost of rolling blackouts and industrial stagnation.”
Njie noted Karpowership operates in 13 countries including Senegal with 330MW and Guinea with 150MW. He said the reason is “economies of scale and long-term contract stability.”
“Senelec contracts for a capacity ten times greater than what NAWEC required. Conversely, NAWEC’s demand was comparatively low and its contract tenure short. Throughout Karpower’s time in The Gambia, Karpowership repeatedly urged NAWEC to pursue longer-term contracts with a bit higher capacity. Instead, those recommendations were ignored,” he said.
Njie added that “NAWEC actually enjoyed a fixed capacity charge lower than many of Karpower’s global partners,” and that prior to exit, “NAWEC was offered the most competitive terms in Karpower’s history in The Gambia, only for the board and management to reject it.”
Njie clarified that most of what NAWEC paid was “a variable cost, specifically, the cost of Heavy Fuel Oil. This is a pass-through cost determined by international Platts pricing, not by Karpowership.”
Njie also said NAWEC was uniquely spared “price escalation and interest fees on late payments, despite payments often being delayed up to six months”.
On capacity, Njie said Karpowership warned in 2018 that proper transmission lines to Kotu were needed. The work was outsourced and “failed to meet the necessary standards, which directly hindered Karpower’s ability to evacuate the full contractual 30MW. Despite this, Karpower consistently delivered 27-28MW.”
“To blame Karpowership for the inability to evacuate agreed-upon capacity is to overlook the infrastructure reality. The reason is not a Karpowership problem but a NAWEC problem,” he said.
Njie concluded that by rejecting long-term scale and reliability, “NAWEC did not avoid an ‘expensive’ provider, they chose a path that ultimately resulted in less reliability and higher systemic risk for the nation.”
NAWEC has not responded to Njie’s rebuttal. The utility faces mounting public pressure over prolonged blackouts.
