Bouygues Travaux led Publics, part of the Socoprim project company, has signed a finance agreement to design, construct operate and maintain a 6.4km highway in the Ivory Coast.

The €232m ($292.2m) highway project, located near the port of Abidjan on the West African coast, will help improve the country’s traffic flow and economic development by facilitating the transport of goods.

The highway construction, the first in West Africa to be carried out by Socoprim, will include building a third Abidjan Bridge called the Henri Konan Bedié Bridge with two three-lane carriageways, covering 1.5km and connecting the Riviera and Marcory districts.

The project will also construct the Valéry Giscard d’Estaing interchange to allow easy traffic movement.

The two existing bridges, which are used by around 200,000 vehicles every day, will be supported by the Henri Konan Bedié Bridge that will be able to serve an extra 100,000 vehicles each day.

The project company includes Bouygues, Total CI, PAIDF, the Ivory Coast government and the National Investment Bank.

Financing comes from the African Development Bank (BAD), West African Development Bank (WADB), ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), African Finance Corporation (AFC), Dutch Investment Bank (FMO), Moroccan Bank of External Trade (BMCE), Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund (PAIDF) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).

Work on the new road is scheduled to start in September 2012 and completion is expected to take 25 months.