The 700 million-euro desalination project, hailed as one of the biggest private investments in the country, was signed by Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and Senegal’s state water company SONES in the final days of Macky Sall’s presidency.

🚰 The plant near Dakar was to have provided around 400,000 cubic meters of water for the capital and other regions.

💬 “This project no longer fits with the government’s strategy options. We have decided not to pursue it,” the country’s water minister Cheikh Tidiane Dieye said in a statement to AFP.

He added that “in three or four years we will need more than 400,000 cubic meters per day because the population of Dakar is growing.”

Dieye also said the government’s lawyers were studying the potential legal consequences of breaking the contract but “construction of the plant has not yet started, so there cannot be any financial damages” for Acwa.