Bouygues Travaux Publics, as the leading firm in the Socoprim* project company, has signed finance agreements covering the design and construction of a 6.4-kilometre highway along with operation and maintenance for 30 years.

This project, in which the construction works represent a total of €232 million, is one of the very first concessions in West Africa. The method of financing employs the most recent and sophisticated project finance techniques, which has been made possible thanks to the involvement of top-ranking lenders and investors: AfDB (African Development Bank), WADB (West African Development Bank), EBID (ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development), AFC (African Finance Corporation), FMO (Dutch Investment Bank), BMCE (Moroccan Bank of External Trade), PAIDF (Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund), and MIGA (Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, part of the World Bank Group).

The highway will incorporate the third Abidjan bridge (the Henri Konan Bedié bridge), 1.5 kilometres long, and the Valéry Giscard d'Estaing interchange. Located close to the largest port on the West African coast, the highway will be an essential tool for the development of the city, improving the traffic flow. The transportation of goods arriving in the port of Abidjan will be facilitated, allowing this international hub to play its part in opening up the hinterland countries. The rapid expansion of both the north and south zones of Abidjan has resulted in the two existing bridges becoming saturated: each day, roughly 200,000 vehicles cross the lagoon.

The Henri Konan Bedié bridge will consist of two three-lane carriageways over 1.5 kilometres. It will link two of the city's major districts, Riviera (in the north) and Marcory. When completed, 100,000 vehicles per day will be able to use the new road infrastructure.

The works carried out by Bouygues Travaux Publics will start in September 2012 and will last two years (25 months). Some preliminary work was carried out in November 2011. At peak periods, 700 people will be onsite, a large number of them workers hired locally, thus injecting vitality into the local economic and social fabric.

Bouygues Construction recently completed the world's tallest cable-stay bridge at Baluarte, Mexico, and signed the contract to construct a stretch of the bridge between Hong Kong and Macao. With this project in Ivory Coast, is once again demonstrating its capacity to construction complex engineering structures. 
 

* The shareholders of Socoprim, the company created to carry out this project, are Bouygues Travaux Publics, Total CI, PAIDF, the Ivory Coast government and the BNI (National Investment Bank).