Mt. Prospect company brings electricity to rural Ghana

Employees of a small Mount Prospect engineering company, Weldy-Lamont, gathered Saturday for their annual corporate dinner, but this year they had more to celebrate than usual.

One of their associates returned that same day from the African nation of Senegal, where negotiations wrapped up for the company's next major project: bringing electricity to parts of that developing country.

And just last week, company officials welcomed dignitaries from Ethiopia to their Mount Prospect offices, as that country's representatives sought to learn more about employing their services.

Already, the company is responsible for spreading electrical connectivity throughout much of rural Ghana. It has brought electricity to nearly 1,000 villages, or more than 1 million people. By this time next year, company officials hope to double those numbers.

It's all part of a $350 million contract that Weldy-Lamont won from the government of Ghana in 2008 to procure equipment and services from U.S. suppliers. The deal was backed by financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

It was supposed to have been a five-year project to provide procurement, engineering, installation and management services, but the work continues.

Who would have thought that a local company would be doing such groundbreaking work - described by Ex-Im Bank officials as the underpinning for Ghana's economic growth and poverty reduction efforts?

"We're passionate now about doing work over there," says President Patrick Hennelly, a Barrington resident. "It's changed our whole vision of ourselves as a company. We feel very close to the people there and realize how they've been ignored for years."

Evidence of this passion permeates their building on Northwest Highway. While outside, it fits in well with the surrounding neighborhood, step inside and photos, maps and drawings from Africa abound, especially in the "Africa Room," where a timeline of photos demonstrates the magnitude of the work.

The room documents the shipment of more than 190,000 wooden electrical poles, shows warehouses stocked with transformers, reels of wire and cables, and illustrates massive substations installed over the last two years to distribute the power.

Photos feature employees with some of their partners who supply the labor, including Meade Electric Co., Spotlight Global and TMG.

The enormity of the firm's Africa work is captured in a 25-foot-long mural - framed in utility poles - that was created by artist Susan Holmbraker of Arlington Heights.

From the mud huts of residents, to the manpower needed to insert each 800-pound electrical pole in the ground, to the children who surround company officials every time they visit, images seem to jump from the canvas.

Company officials unveiled the artwork last fall when they held an open house to celebrate their recent building renovation.

"We think she did a phenomenal job," says Dennis Lamont, company chairman. "You can really see the impact of what we're doing for the people there."