Collaboration with Siemens in Africa

Bearing works with projects related to innovation and growth, for both public and private sector clients. Most of our engagements are complex, integrated projects, where the process to develop vision and strategy, as well as detailed planning and execution are keys to success. Many of our engagements are public private partnerships, involving actors from all sectors of society, and often we are tasked with acquiring funding for project implementation.

The Power Industry sector is one of the prioritized sectors we work with. Our role with engagement in all steps from innovation and strategy development to establishment, development and expansion of power industry in the northern European markets are highly successful reference projects.

Gasturbine im Werk Finspong / Gas turbine at Finspong plantRecently we have been invited to collaborate with Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery on feasibility studies for infrastructure projects in Africa.

Siemens aims to play a constructive role in the development of Africa’s power sector. Population growth and increasing living standards means increasingly higher demand for energy and gas and bio power plants are appropriate solutions to quickly develop supply, to meet Africa’s growing energy requirements and ensure electricity is transported reliably to the continent’s remotest regions.

As a leading global engineering company, Siemens provides innovative solutions to help tackle Africa’s major challenges, across the key sectors of industry, energy and healthcare and Siemens’ business activities cover a wide spectrum of technologies: from power plants to water treatment plants, from security for stadiums to medical equipment, and much more. Siemens has been successful in contributing to the development of the economies of Africa for many years.

africaElectricity plays an important role in the socio-economic and technological development of every nation. The absence of a stable and effective electricity supply is undoubtedly one of the most important factors hindering sustained growth in many African economies. This perhaps explains why electricity consumption is one of the basic indices used in measuring the standard of living of a nation.

To take the example of Nigeria, electricity demand by far outstrips the supply. While the demand by electricity consumers has been estimated at 10,000 mw supply is at less than 3500 mw, resulting in a huge electricity production shortfall, which is inhibiting the country’s economic development.

Nigeria has an estimated 159 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, giving the country one of the top ten natural gas endowments in the world and many initiatives aim to develop new gas power plants, however lack of in-depth feasibility studies to the quality that the international investor community requires makes these projects slow to take off.

Most new power plants are natural gas fired but also biogas is an attractive energy source that takes a part in stable economic, agricultural and rural development and environmental protection.

Biogas production from livestock manure, sludge and municipal, livestock and organic waste contributes to energy sources diversification and also increases energy supply protection, competition and stability, in addition to that provides new income chances to the farmers. Biogas is a valuable energy source, because of the variety of its use – electric energy production, heating, cooling and car fuel. It, can also be supplied to natural gas network.

In Africa infrastructure like power plants are in a big demand, however such projects are rather  slow to develop due to their complexity and need for accurate planning. Therefore, Bearing together with engineering partners can support with feasibility studies, including review of proposed business structure, policies and corporate governance structures, development of investment memorandum for project finance and recruitment of investors.

Siemens SWT-3

We look forward to work in collaboration with Siemens. Bearings project finance experts have completed in excess of USD 15 billion of global project finance assignments in the hotel & leisure, aerospace, infrastructure and oil & gas sectors. Challenging assignments successfully completed include projects within politically unstable environments, sovereign guaranties with limited credit worthiness and the first USD 1 billion loan syndication for an African sponsor.

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