Less than a year after the August 2020 announcement that Russia would build the second nuclear power plant on the African continent — at Dabaa on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, 250 km west of Cairo — the preliminary paperwork is now completed, and the actual construction phase is about to commence. That exciting news was sufficient for Rosatom, the plant’s main contractor and supplier, to urge the Egyptian Nuclear Power Plant Authority (NPPA) to call a press conference on July 12, which brought together these two key players to celebrate their accomplishment. In this, it should be understood that this “win, win” contract is just as much of a foreign policy coup for Russia, as it is for Egypt and Africa.
From the write-up on the NPPA’s website, three Rosatom representatives spoke along with two Egyptian members of the NPPA. Rosatom regional director Alexander Voronkov, while situating the Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in the context of “clean” energy (Rosatom’s “Sustainability Officer” was also present at the event), also stressed the larger economic benefits, saying that NPP was, “the largest infrastructure project, that supports the development of various [economic] sectors and contributes to increasing the state’s income. The NPP is considered one of the most important drivers of sustainable development, a source of employment and stable development at the level of the region and the whole country.”
