Hydro-electric boost for Congo

from The Times

KINSHASA - A hydro-electric plant upstream from the mouth of the Congo River will be modernised with a 58 million dollar (36.6 million euro) grant from the African Development Bank, the bank announced today.

Under an accord signed on April 10, the money will also go towards building a power line from the Inga plant to Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s capital about 250 kilometres to the north, said a bank communique.

The aging hydro-electric power station at Inga lies on powerful falls north of the port of Matadi in the west of the vast nation, in part of a narrow strip of DRC territory through which the Congo River runs down to the Atlantic coast.

The DRC, roughly the size of western Europe in area, poverty-stricken despite vast natural mineral wealth, and ravaged by civil and local conflicts over the past decade, has one of the lowest levels of electricity consumption in the world due to lack of investment together with rapid population growth.

Average consumption pro capita fell from 161 kilowatt hours in 1980 to 91 in 2002, said the African Development Bank.

The DRC’s electrification rate is only six percent compared to an average 20 percent for Africa as a whole.

The agreement was signed in Tunis, temporary headquarters of the African Development Bank, by Mandla Gantsho, bank vice-president responsible for infrastructure, and by DRC charge d’affaires Genevieve Lukusa Kayembe Nkaya, said a bank communique received in Kinshasa.

It said the project covered rehabilitation of 10 out of 14 turbines connected to the Inga hydro-electric power scheme, the construction of the high voltage power line running from Inga to Kinshasa, and the modernisation and extension of the capital’s electricity supply.

The energy generated in the restored Inga power plants would also be able to supply other provinces and neighbouring countries, the statement said.

Two modernised power stations at Inga would be able to generate nearly 40,000 megawatts, enough to provide electricity to all of southern Africa.