The challenges of building West Africa's largest wind farm

A 62-meter wind blade from China, coming in to dock at Dakar's port.

Senegal is building West Africa's largest wind farm.

Located in Taiba Ndiaye, around 100km from the capital, 16 of the 48 wind turbines are already functioning and generating 50 megawatts.

They'll start producing energy for the national power grid by the end of December.

The entire project is expected to reach 158.7 megawatts by 2020.

Privately-owned British renewable power company Lekela is financing around half of the 342 million dollar farm.

Its local head, Massaer Cisse.

(SOUNDBITE) (French) HEAD OF LEKELA IN SENEGAL, MASSAER CISSE, SAYING:

"Once fully operational, this park will cover approximately 15% of the country's national production. If you calculate this quickly it means we can serve millions of people or millions of households, depending on which type of household we are referring to. But, approximately, it will cover 15% of the country's production, so what the country needs."

It takes around an hour to fix a blade on top of a 180-meter wind turbine, using a crane especially brought in from Spain.

Construction on the 40-hectare site started in early 2018.

Cisse says the main challenge will be to connect the farm's power station to the national electricity grid.

(SOUNDBITE) (French) HEAD OF LEKELA IN SENEGAL, MASSAER CISSE, SAYING:

"Technically it is very complicated, we have a network that is not very modern, it's a lot of work and we are doing it, it's going to take years and we hope that this park will just be the first one in Senegal."

President Macky Sall is eager to make Senegal a leader in renewables on the continent, and has a 30% target for clean energy in the coming years.

The wind farm will provide half of this.