15 months to meet Benin’s road lighting needs

On your marks, get set… In January 2019, we announced another international success, with a contract to supply and install 15,000 solar streetlights in Benin. Work is now underway, with the first off-grid streetlights along newly upgraded roads poised to come online in the days and weeks ahead. In this article, we go back to the start of this large-scale project.

Benin’s road upgrade scheme

Boosting the local economy

Benin’s living environment and regional development agency (ACV-DT) is responsible for delivering major projects to energize the local economy. One of its current priorities is to upgrade and extend the country’s urban road networks to provide a better road user experience and ease mobility. It also wants to make these cities and communities more attractive.

International call for tenders

To improve safety
on these new roads, the Benin government issued an international call for
tenders in the second half of 2018 for the provision of powerful, dependable
public lighting. Fonroche Lighting — the world leader in off-grid solar
lighting — submitted a bid in October. Our sustainable solar lighting products
met all the requirements of the project and so last year Christmas came early
when we learned we’d been selected!

The contract was officially signed in September 2019. And from 18 November, the installation teams started work at the various sites.

15,000 solar streetlights for Benin

The project is in
two parts, with a first tranche of streetlights for communities in the country’s
south, including the capital Porto-Novo, and a second for the north and centre.
By 2021, some 15,000 off-grid solar streetlights will have been installed in
nine locations around the country. Over 5,000 of these will be in Cotonou, the
country’s largest city and economic centre.

To ensure seamless
management of this project, Fonroche Lighting has set up a subsidiary in Benin,
with the project manager acting as the France-based company’s main point of
contact locally.