Johannesburg - The over 40-year-old Grand Inga project to develop hydroelectric capacity on the Congo River tottered another step forward with South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announcing yesterday the signing of a treaty to jointly develop the project, which will eventually provide about 40 000 megawatts of electricity to the continent.
The Grand Inga project on the Congo River would cost as much as $100 billion (R986bn), President Jacob Zuma said in a speech at the signing ceremony yesterday.
“The Grand Inga project has the potential to light up the region and further boost economic growth of the surrounding countries,” Zuma said in Kinshasa. “This will also provide South African companies with further investment opportunities, including in other areas of infrastructure.”
Zuma’s signature is to endorse the agreement for South Africa to buy 2 500MW out of a total 4 800MW projected for the first phase.
Construction for the first phase is set to begin in October 2015 and could take five to six years.
The entire project is projected to eventually produce 44 000MW, dwarfing China’s Three Gorges Dam, which is the largest hydropower project and most notorious dam. The massive project sets records for the number of people potentially displaced (more than 1.2 million), the number of cities and towns flooded (13 cities, 140 towns, 1 350 villages), and the length of the reservoir (more than 600km).
Grand Inga will be built in six phases before reaching full capacity, according to the DRC’s Energy Ministry.
One megawatt is enough to supply 2 000 average European homes.
Inga 1 (351MW) and Inga 2 (1 424MW) were commissioned in 1972 and 1982, respectively, as part of a failed industrial development scheme under then-Zaire’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko.
The two dams currently operate at around 50 percent capacity because they have not received maintenance attention for many years.
The DRC would choose a developer from three consortiums of companies, the ministry has said previously.
The groups are made up of China Three Gorges Corporation and Sinohydro; Posco and Daewoo of South Korea in partnership with Canada’s SNC-Lavalin Group; and Actividades de Construcción y Servicios, based in Madrid, and Spain’s Eurofinsa Group.
The DRC currently had about 2 400MW of installed capacity, about half of which was unavailable because of mismanagement, the World Bank said last year.
Only about 10 percent of the country’s 70 million people have electricity, according to the Energy Ministry.
The treaty provides for the power to be shared between the DRC, South Africa and other nations in the region.
South Africa, which has installed capacity of about 40 000MW, was also driving an initiative to connect the 15 members of the Southern African Development Community through a better road and rail network, Zuma said.
“Intra-regional trade and sustained growth on the continent must be preceded by enabling technical and transport infrastructure,” the president said. - Bloomberg and Reuters