| MALI YEELEN KURA
Number of customers of
Yeelen Kura in December 2008: 2,450
In 1997 Nuon and the
French electricity company EDF jointly carried out a feasibility
study in the cotton region of southern Mali. On the basis of
this a business plan was drawn up for a decentralised
electricity company - la Société de Services Décentralisés EDF
Nuon (Yeelen Kura) – in which Nuon and EDF are each 50%
shareholders. Since January 2001 Yeelen Kura (this commercial
name of the company means “new light” in the Bambara language)
has been supplying the basic electricity requirements of
households in southern Mali.
The goal of the Yeelen
Kura joint venture is to provide electricity to around 5,000
households in twenty villages in the cotton region of Mali, by
2010.
The board of Yeelen Kura
consists of Annemarie Goedmakers (FRES; President), Mercedes
Lopez (EDF), Guy Marboeuf (EDF) and Roland van der Pouw (Nuon).
General manager of Yeelen Kura is Amadou Diallo, from Mali.
The head office of
Yeelen Kura is situated in Koutiala. Electricity stores are
established in the larger villages in the region, where,
depending on the number of customers, one or two Yeelen Kura
employees are stationed. These employees are responsible for the
installation, maintenance and repair of the systems, as well as
collecting the monthly service fees and the local accounting.
Power is generated by
means of Solar Home Systems (SHS), a diesel generator or solar
power plant, all connected to a mini-grid. Customers can choose
from various service levels, with corresponding fees. These fees
are comparable to the expenses for their initial power sources.
To reach these fee
levels, subsidy is necessary. Nuon and EDF received ORET/MILIEV-subsidy
from the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs in the initial phases
of the project. In 2006, a subsidy was granted by AMADER (a
Malinese government agency, established to promote rural
electrification). Thanks to the allocation of this € 2,3 million
subsidy by the Malinese government, Yeelen Kura can expand its
operations to 5,000 customers in 2007.
In 2007, a solar power
plant will be established with co-financing from PSOM.
Click here to view a
short film about Yeelen Kura" the company that FRES manages in
Mali
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