Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea, and Benin, have signed memoranda of understanding with Morocco and Nigeria to participate in the flagship Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project, according to a statement issued by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
The accession of four new countries raised the overall number of states participating in the project, implemented by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company and the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines to ten. Last year, memoranda were concluded with ECOWAS, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Ghana.
According to ECOWAS, the project could pave the way for a sustainable and reliable gas supply which would improve the living standards of the continent's residents.
"This significant infrastructure project will contribute to accelerating access to energy for all, improving the living conditions of the populations, integrating the economies of the sub-region, and mitigating desertification," the statement said, adding that it would provide Africa "with a new economic, political, and strategic dimension."
The project, which will take more than six years to build, will promote trade and the industrialization of countries, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy and Digitalization, Sediko Douka told local media.
The accession of four new countries has raised the overall number of states participating in the project to ten. Last year, memoranda were concluded with ECOWAS, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Ghana.
In this vein, the project embodies the combined efforts of Nigeria and Morocco with ECOWAS, which proposed its West Africa Gas Pipeline Extension Project in 1982.
"The similarities between the two projects soon became apparent, and so, the need for synergy to pool efforts in order to achieve a single gas pipeline project," the new ECOWAS statement stressed. "The two project teams worked together to have a MOU signed in September 2022 to merge the two projects into a single project."
The Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project was announced in 2016 in Abuja by Morocco's King Mohammed VI and former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.