Electricity transmission lines. - Courtesy

The Ugandan government is reportedly negotiating a 180-million-dollar agreement with a Chinese company to build hydro power transmission line to South Sudan.

The delegation of the Chinese firm Sinohydro (SINOH.UL) Corporation Limited met Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni on Monday, according to a statement from Museveni’s office said.

The project will involve the construction of a 138-km (85.75 miles) high-voltage transmission line to take power to South Sudan.

The Chinese firm is also expected to expand two substations and construct a new substation.

“We are very much willing to help develop this project with the required finance if needed,” the company’s vice president, Yang Yi Xin was quoted as saying.

Sinohydro is completing a $1.5 billion, 600 megawatt hydropower project on River Nile in northern Uganda that is meant to be the source for the electricity exports to South Sudan.

According to Reuters news agency, President Museveni expressed support for Sinohydro’s offer to develop the project a year after Uganda and South Sudan signed a power sales agreement.

In February this year, Uganda said it was planning to construct hydroelectric power transmission lines from Nwoya District to Juba following an “urgent” request from the South Sudan government.

A June 2022 report published by the Business Insider Africa ranked South Sudan as the least electrified country in the continent, standing at number one among 10 countries with the least electricity access.

The report detailing nations with the least electricity access indicates that the country stands at first among the worst performing African nations in term of electricity supply.

The report shows that only 7% of the estimated 12 million people in South Sudan can access electricity.

An energy sector official in South Sudan later lamented as ‘shameful’ the fact that the country has one of the world’s least accesses to electricity and the highest electricity tariffs.