Gambiaj.com – (BANJUL, The Gambia) – Former Karpowership Gambia Country Manager Omar A.B. Njie has challenged the narrative that the Turkish power company was an expensive source of electricity for The Gambia, arguing that the country’s energy debate has failed to properly account for the cost of reliability, fuel, transmission infrastructure, and contract terms.
Njie, who served as Karpowership’s country manager, said he was speaking out because of what he described as a persistent narrative that the company’s presence weakened the financial position of the National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC) and undermined the country’s energy security.
He argued that comparing Karpowership’s electricity with cheaper imports from Senegal’s SENELEC or Guinea’s EDG overlooked fundamental differences in how the power is generated and supplied.
“Critics often compare Karpowership to imports from SENELEC or EDG, but this is an ‘apples to oranges’ comparison,” Njie said.
Njie: Cheaper Imports Do Not Mean Greater Reliability
According to Njie, SENELEC can offer electricity to NAWEC at relatively low rates because Senegal has a much larger and diversified generation system and can sell excess capacity at marginal cost.
He said the infrastructure required to generate that electricity was already in place, meaning the incremental cost of supplying additional power to The Gambia could be significantly lower than the cost of dedicated generation.
Njie made a similar distinction with Guinea, where he said hydropower contributes significantly to electricity generation.
While hydroelectricity is generally cheaper than thermal generation, he said its availability can fluctuate according to seasonal conditions.
Karpowership, by contrast, provided dedicated generation capacity with an uptime guarantee of 95 percent, Njie said.
He argued that the higher reliability of a dedicated power source should be included when assessing its overall economic value.
“Reliability has a price, and that price is often lower than the systemic cost of rolling blackouts and industrial stagnation,” he said.
Njie said NAWEC had previously struggled to operate even 20 megawatts of its more than 70MW installed generation capacity, although the utility’s available generation had more recently improved to around 30MW.
His argument comes as The Gambia continues to face questions over electricity reliability, generation capacity, and the financial sustainability of NAWEC.
‘Karpower Offered Better Terms Before Exit’
Njie also disputed the suggestion that Karpowership’s commercial terms were responsible for NAWEC’s financial difficulties.
He said Karpowership repeatedly encouraged NAWEC to enter into longer-term contracts and commit to higher capacity, which he argued would have reduced the cost per unit through economies of scale.
He pointed to Senegal, where Karpowership supplies more than 330MW, compared with the substantially smaller capacity contracted by NAWEC.
Njie said the larger Senegalese contract allowed Karpowership to spread fixed operational costs over a much greater volume of electricity.
He further claimed that Karpowership reduced its capacity charges each time its agreement with NAWEC was renegotiated after the company entered the Gambian market in 2018.
According to Njie, the company offered NAWEC its most competitive terms in The Gambia shortly before its departure, but the offer was rejected by the utility’s board and management.
Njie also said the bulk of NAWEC’s payments to Karpowership consisted of variable fuel costs, particularly Heavy Fuel Oil, rather than charges set entirely by Karpowership.
He said the HFO component was linked to international Platts pricing and therefore functioned largely as a pass-through cost.
He further claimed that NAWEC was the only national entity among Karpowership’s international customers whose contracts did not include price escalation and interest charges for late payments, despite payment delays allegedly reaching six months.
Transmission Bottleneck Limited 30MW Supply
Njie also sought to shift responsibility for the gap between Karpowership’s contracted 30MW and the power actually evacuated into NAWEC’s network.
He said Karpowership made it clear when it arrived in The Gambia in 2018 that adequate transmission infrastructure would be required to move electricity from the Powership to Kotu Power Station.
According to Njie, the transmission work was outsourced to a private company, which he declined to name, but the infrastructure failed to meet the required standards.
He said this prevented Karpowership from evacuating the full 30MW contracted by NAWEC.
Despite the transmission constraints, he said, Karpowership consistently supplied between 27MW and 28MW.
Njie therefore rejected any suggestion that the failure to deliver the full contracted capacity was a Karpowership generation problem.
“The reason for not evacuating the agreed capacity is not a Karpowership problem but a NAWEC problem,” he said.
Why Countries Still Use Karpowership
Njie pointed to Karpowership’s continued operations in countries including Senegal, Guinea, Ghana, and Ivory Coast as evidence that utilities facing generation shortfalls continue to see value in the company’s model.
Karpowership, he said, currently operates power plants or supplies electricity across several countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, while maintaining shipyards and manufacturing operations in Istanbul, Texas, Japan, and South Korea.
He argued that the continued use of the company by larger electricity markets was primarily driven by the need for reliable generation and the economies that come with larger, longer-term contracts.
Karpowership’s model, he said, allows countries facing electricity shortages to deploy floating power plants relatively quickly rather than waiting years for conventional generation infrastructure to be constructed.
Njie maintained that The Gambia’s experience should therefore not be judged simply by comparing the price per kilowatt-hour with electricity imported from neighboring countries.
He argued that the wider calculation should include reliability, fuel costs, transmission constraints, contract duration, capacity commitments, and the economic consequences of electricity shortages.
“The economic logic of the energy sector is dictated by scale, long-term commitment and infrastructure stability,” Njie said.
Njie’s intervention adds a new dimension to the debate over Karpowership’s role in The Gambia, at a time when the country continues to grapple with unreliable electricity supplies and questions over the long-term strategy for strengthening NAWEC’s generation capacity.
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