Africa is an indispensable and important part of the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative. The successful implementation of a large number of projects such as railways, highways, airports, ports, and power stations has brought significant changes to the economic and social development of Africa. Among them, the pace of clean energy construction has gradually accelerated, paving the way for the Green Belt and Road.

China-Africa Co-construction of the Belt and Road Initiative

The Swak Dam undertaken by Energy China Gezhouba Group is the largest water conservancy and hydropower project under construction in Kenya. At the project site, workers are intensively constructing. Project manager Xiong Wentao stated that the Swak Multi-purpose Water Conservancy Development Project is Kenya’s flagship project to achieve the 2030 long-term development plan and the "Four Development Goals". It is also Kenya’s current single-unit project under construction. The largest integrated water conservancy project integrating dams, water supply, irrigation, and power generation, will bring huge economic benefits to the water supply, power supply and agricultural irrigation in southeastern Kenya, and greatly ease the Konza Science and Technology City and the infrastructure. There is a shortage of water and electricity for irrigation for more than 3 million people in the three counties of Tui, Macueni, and Macacos. "We are now in the first phase of the dam civil engineering. The dam civil engineering mainly includes the dam, diversion tunnel and spillway. The dam is 1.5 kilometers long and the dam height is designed to be 82 meters high. The total amount of filling is It is about 12 million cubic meters. The length of this rockfill spillway is about 1.3 kilometers, and the width is about 300 meters. The overflow capacity is 14,000 cubic meters per second. The construction of the bottom plate is currently underway. Overall, we are currently in progress of this project The overall situation is relatively smooth. At present, about 60% of the overall project has been completed."

Feishnazby is an environmental expert at Swak Dam. She is responsible for the implementation of environmental policies on site. Faith’s home is in a small town not far from the dam. By chance, she saw the job advertisement and came here to apply. Faith said that her hometown is drought all the year round, power generation mainly relies on the solar energy at home, and electricity is often unstable. She believes that this project will not only provide her with work, but will also change the face of her hometown. "A lot of people will benefit from the Swak Dam project, such as promoting economic activities here. We will have water supply, and there will be enough food. So I think this will bring huge benefits to the local community. Because of this Project, I can live a good life."

In the Swak dam project, local employees like Feishnazibi abound. Project manager Xiong Wentao said that the project has a total of more than 1,300 Kenyan staff, and the proportion of localized staff has reached more than 90%. "We have provided about 1,300 employment opportunities. We currently have about 120-130 Chinese people. All of our on-site operations are done by local people. There are our safety engineers, environmental engineers, and quality engineers. a lot of."

In addition to the Swak Dam, when Chinese companies undertook and designed the One Belt One Road project, while promoting local economic development, they also fully considered ecological factors, implemented a number of green, low-carbon, and sustainable clean energy projects, and built a large amount of solar energy. , Wind energy and other renewable energy projects. Fang Ke, head of the Kenya branch of Gezhouba Group, said that Africa is endowed with good natural conditions and has a lot of room for the development of clean energy. "We always believe that the African continent has unique conditions. One is natural conditions, especially the development of clean energy and abundant hydropower resources, as well as some wind energy resources. Our Chinese companies rely on technological advantages and equipment advantages, plus China The financial advantage under the non-cooperative forum project has room for joint improvement of common development. We have also surveyed the clean energy reserves in the Kenyan market before and found that it is very suitable for the development of clean energy."

According to the plan, the first phase of the Swak Dam in Kenya will be completed by the end of 2022. Editor/Tian Zengpeng