Africa / Fact sheets

By Global Village Cameroon and IRN

Lom Pangar Dam Fact Sheet

Terri Hathaway (IRN) and Halleson Durrell (GVC)

The government of Cameroon is currently considering building the Lom Pangar Dam, a project that would displace rural villagers, flood protected forests, and increase the vulnerability of Cameroon’s economy to climate change. Increased hydropower generation downstream of Lom Pangar would mostly go to a large, foreign–owned aluminum smelter, which is expected to continue receiving below–cost electricity rates subsidized by residential ratepayers. The dam has been discussed for over a decade, but with a growing national energy crisis, the Cameroonian government has recently intensified efforts to obtain financing for the project.

1. The Wrong Solution for a Warming World
Lom Pangar would be the fourth dam¹ built to help regulate the Sanaga River for the benefit of the country’s two primary hydropower dams, Song Loulou (384 MW) and Edea (264 MW). These run–of–river hydropower dams have experienced significant reductions in power generation due to dry seasons exacerbated by drought. The Government of Cameroon hopes the Lom Pangar Dam will increase these dams’ ability to generate power during dry periods by an estimated 105 MW to 216 MW.² This increased electricity would assist the southern Cameroon grid’s capacity, where the Alucam aluminum smelter is seeking to double its production.³

In July 1995, the Government of Tanzania began construction of the 180–megawatt Lower Kihansi Hydropower Project (LKHP) in order to meet the growing electricity demands of its mining and tourism industries. The World Bank jointly funded the $275 million project along with the European Investment Bank and development agencies from Norway (NORAD), Sweden (SIDA), and Germany (KfW). Formally commissioned in July 2000, the project has been supplying electricity to the Tanzania Electricity Supply Company (TANESCO), the parastatal that owns and operates the project, since December 1999.

Updated 2005 

Africa’s largest infrastructure project the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a massive, multi–dam scheme built to divert water from Lesotho’s Maloti Mountains to South Africa’s industrial Gauteng Province. The first phases of the World Bank–supported project involve the construction of three large dams which, when completed will dispossess more than 30,000 rural farmers of assets (including homes, fields, and grazing lands) and deprive many of their livelihoods.