Maputo - An Egyptian firm, Elsewedy Electric, is set to invest 200 million dollars to generate and increase access to electricity in the southern African country of Mozambique, a local newspaper reported Thursday. Mozambique's independent daily Opais reported that Elswedy planned to spend 100 million dollars on rural electrification projects and another 100 million dollars on building small hydroelectric and coal- fired power stations. Elsewedy Electric Africa's Director, Hatem Abd, told reporters in Mozambique's capital Maputo that the company had already granted state electricity utility Electricidade de Mocambique (EDM) 11 million dollars in funding last year. The two new investments were part of a package still being negotiated with President Armando Guebuza's government, he added. The announcement is a boost for the government's plans to electrify the entire country by 2014 but EDM is still running short of the 718 million dollars it needs to achieve that objective. Currently only 89 of 128 districts in the vast former Portuguese colony of 20 million people are covered by electricity from the national grid. Those districts make up around 14 per cent of the population. Elsewedy's investment is expected to help bring electricity to a further 3.5 million people in the centre and north of the country, bringing to 23 per cent the proportion of people with formal access to power.
