DR Congo is set to take an equity stake in a US$270 million cross-border power line linking the country to Zambia, said its finance ministry. The move comes as electricity demand in the country’s mining region rises faster than supply, with miners building metal processing plants to satisfy local policymakers’ desire to keep some of the value chain in the country. The rising power needs are forcing operators to turn to diesel and build their own backup systems due to under-developed industrial options.
The project, approved by Zambia’s energy regulator last year, is being developed by Enterprise Power DRC, a private power trading company, and its Zambian subsidiary. The ministry of finance said the 200-kilometer, high-voltage line will have initial capacity of 460 MW, expandable to 550 MW, running from Kalumbila, a copper-mining town in northwestern Zambia, to Kolwezi, the heart of Congo’s copper mining region. But a start date for the project is still to be set.
The planned equity stake is being tied to the Congolese government’s wider infrastructure push after the US$1.25 billion debut eurobond it raised last month. Finance Minister Doudou Fwamba told reporters in Kinshasa that studies showed 1 GW of additional power could double current mine production in the country, adding that DR Congo needs energy infrastructure to move from lightly processed mineral exports toward local processing and manufacturing.
But the demand for more power is growing as mines process more metals locally in keeping with the ambitions of the Congolese government. At Kamoa-Kakula, Ivanhoe has started producing copper anodes from a new smelter designed to process 500,000 tonnes a year, adding a power-hungry step to an operation already underserved by DR Congo’s electricity deficit.
That gap is pulling private power companies deeper into the mining region. Frank Alloghe, CrossBoundary Energy’s mining and industrial lead in Africa, said that the continent’s Copperbelt is now the “strategic core” of the company’s Africa strategy. CrossBoundary is developing a US$250 million solar-and-storage project for Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula, with phased delivery expected toward full capacity by the 3rd quarter this year.
