The military junta in Burkina Faso has announced an agreement with Rosatom, the Russian public nuclear energy company, to build a nuclear power plant.
The memorandum of understanding was signed recently in Moscow with the aim of promoting cooperation in the field of the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.
The agreement was signed by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Quarries of Burkina Faso, Simon Pierre Boussim, and the general director of the Russian National Atomic Energy Company, Rosatom, Nikolai N. Spasski.
Burkina Faso is one of the countries with the lowest connection rate to the electrical grid in the world. Only 21 percent of the population has electricity supply, a situation that has placed the country as one of the least developed in the world.
The country’s military leader, Ibrahim Traoré, has been strengthening the country’s cooperation with Russia and had asked last July during his visit to Moscow for help to build a nuclear power plant, an unusual request, considering the huge cost burden for a country with limited resources.
“We have a critical need for energy. It is an important point for me because we need, if possible, to build a nuclear power plant in Burkina Faso that generates electricity,” Traoré declared in Moscow.
Sources say Moscow’s decision to support the development of nuclear energy in the country illustrates the seriousness with which Russia takes its growing partnerships on the African continent.
