On 4 May 2026, the Cameroonian state created the Société camerounaise d'électricité (Socadel), taking over the former concessionaire Eneo with the state as sole shareholder. The new entity covers generation, transmission, distribution and the import-export of energy. The renationalisation closes the chapter opened in the early 2000s.
The change of name has not ended the cuts. Since 1 June 2026, the Kribi (gas) and Dibamba (fuel) thermal plants, operated by the Globeleq group, have withdrawn their capacity from the southern interconnected grid, causing outages affecting around 40% of subscribers in the Littoral and West regions.
The problem is financial first. Under the distributor's restructuring plan, it shows an average monthly deficit of around 13 billion FCFA. Permanently strained cash flow that feeds through to payments to independent producers — hence, in part, Globeleq's withdrawal.
It is also technical. The commissioning in March 2025 of the Nachtigal hydroelectric dam, with its 420 MW, was meant to raise installed capacity by around 30% and end rationing. But downstream, the transmission link, run by the national transmission company Sonatrel, is accumulating an investment deficit and struggling to move the power produced to consumption areas.
The Far North is living through a separate, older crisis: since 2020, cuts there sometimes exceed twelve hours a day, with the reduced output of the Lagdo dam — hit by rainfall variability — cited as the main cause.
One report has quantified the drift: outages have quadrupled in Cameroon in four years. Socadel therefore inherits a file where changing status is not enough — the sector's debt must be settled, transmission funded and plant supply secured, three tasks with no shared timetable.
