Bickering endangers hydro project
Serious disagreements between groups of Spanish and Chinese developers seeking to build an 11,000MW hydropower plant in Democratic Republic of Congo may scuttle plans for the $14bn project, says a report.
Serious disagreements between groups of Spanish and Chinese developers seeking to build an 11,000MW hydropower plant in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may scuttle plans for the $14bn project, says a report.
The Inga III dam would be the biggest hydroelectric power station on Africa’s second-longest river and provide much-needed electricity to DRC and other nations, including SA. After the DRC government in 2017 asked two rival groups — one Chinese, one Spanish — to merge, the partners submitted a joint proposal in November 2018.
However, they were unable to agree on the project’s development and the percentage of each party’s share, the main company in the Chinese consortium, China Three Gorges, said in a September 20 letter to Bruno Kapandji, head of DRC’s Agency for the Development and Promotion of the Grand Inga Project, or ADPI. The letter was published on Monday in a report from New York University’s Congo research group and Belgium-based advocacy organisation Resource Matters.
Inga III is part of a longdelayed plan known as Grand Inga that is intended to eventually harness up to 40,000MW of power from the Congo River. Management of the project was criticised under former President Joseph Kabila for its lack of transparency. In July 2016, the
World Bank halted a $73m grant for environmental and social studies after Kabila put the Inga agency under his direct control.
The near-collapse of the current group of developers provides an opportunity for Kabila’s successor, Felix Tshisekedi, “to completely reopen the Inga III dossier, both in terms of its own capacity as well as that of its investors”, the report said. “This ambitious project must be revisited to ensure that the Congolese population benefits from it.”
While Kabila appointed the Chinese and Spanish groups as co-developers in 2018, Tshisekedi, who assumed office in January, has yet to approve the consortium’s bid, and the partners are waiting to hear whether they will be granted exclusive rights to finance technical, environmental and social studies, as well as attract lenders.
The government, meanwhile, may consider scaling back Inga III to an earlier, 4,800MW design the Spanish and Chinese partners do not see as economically viable. At a conference hosted by DRC’s presidency in August, Maximilien Munga, head of the energy ministry’s project co-ordination and management, said the smaller version is “underpinned by proven demand” and could be completed faster.
China Three Gorges said in the letter it “remains ready to actively co-operate with the Congolese party”. But “important problems in China and the Ebola epidemic in your country” have prevented executives from visiting DRC, it said.