Context
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is among the five poorest nations in the world, yet is endowed with exceptional natural resources, including minerals, hydropower potential, significant arable land, immense biodiversity, and the world’s second-largest rainforest.
The hydropower potential of Inga could be transformative in a country where an estimated 73.5% of people are living on less than $2.15 a day in 2024 and only 1 in 5 people has access to electricity and in a region where the lack of electricity is a major brake on progress and poverty reduction.
The World Bank Group recognizes the scale of both the opportunities and challenges associated with developing Inga’s unique potential in ways that benefit the country broadly and sustainably, while also realizing some of the regional and global benefits that the appropriate development of Inga would bring and hopes to contribute to finding solutions that benefit the Congolese people the most.
The Inga Hydropower site
The Inga hydropower site is located on the Congo River between Kinshasa and the Atlantic Ocean. The site is characterized by particularly high average river flows (the second largest in the world after the Amazon), a natural drop of around 97m caused by rapids, and a bend in the river that makes a variety of lower-impact designs possible. The first hydropower plant, Inga 1, was built in 1978 with an installed capacity of 351MW, while Inga 2, built in 1982, has an installed capacity of 1,424 MW. These two power plants are under rehabilitation and currently operate at about 80% of their capacity, but nevertheless represent the majority of electricity generated by the national energy utility, SNEL.
The Inga site is globally unique due to the immense scale of its hydropower potential (around 42,000 MW) and the diverse opportunities for its development. Effectively harnessing this potential could be transformative for the DRC and provide significant benefits to Sub-Saharan Africa and the world more broadly. The next project – Inga 3 – could generate between 3,000 and 11,000 MW depending on the design approach, with widely differing economic, environmental, social, and financial costs and benefits. Based on previous studies, there could be up to eight different hydropower projects clustered at the Inga site which could be developed over time, depending on the needs of the DRC and surrounding countries.
Previous World Bank engagement
In 2014, the World Bank Board approved a $73.1-million IDA grant for the Inga-3 Basse Chute (BC) and Mid-Size Hydropower Development Technical Assistance Project, with $22.4 million of parallel co-financing from the African Development Bank. The financing supported a flexible suite of technical assistance for Inga and other mid-size hydropower sites, including strategic advice to the government of DRC, complementary studies, capacity building, and institutional strengthening. The Bank withdrew from the project in 2016 due to strategic differences with the government at that time. Only 6% of the grant had been disbursed at that time.
Inga as an economic transformation opportunity
The government has recently developed a vision of Inga as an integrated development program that goes beyond the hydropower site and delivers broad benefits for energy access, forest protection, local area development, green mineral value chains, infrastructure and connectivity, as well as strengthening skills and governance. The World Bank Group agrees with the broad vision and is therefore exploring how it can support the Government and other stakeholders achieve it in practice.
At the same time, the World Bank Group is redoubling its efforts to increase energy access in Africa, including through the Mission 300 program, which aims to connect an additional 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030 in partnership with the African Development Bank. As part of this program, the DRC is currently developing an “energy compact” to accelerate access in a country where about 80% of people still lack electricity. The program includes investments in a wide variety of generation, transmission and distribution opportunities, as well as reforms across the energy sector. The development of Inga is being designed to build on and reinforce these broader changes in the energy sector, including contributing to the longer-term scale up of generation locally and regionally.
More broadly, with the world’s second largest rainforest, massive hydropower resources, and mineral reserves vital to the global green energy transition, the DRC has the potential to fulfill its ambition of becoming a globally important “climate solutions country”, as articulated by the Government. The recent Country Climate Development Report outlines the potential for the DRC to achieve this role. Furthermore, the appropriate development of Inga provides a practical pathway to realizing some of this great potential, through generating large amounts of clean enery, reducing demand for charcoal, promoting a cleaner and greener mining industry, enabling greater value addition within the DRC from minerals and other economic sectors, strengthening governance and the investment climate, and investing in local economic growth and jobs. Given its scale, there is also the potential for significant energy exports to other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Potential World Bank Group support
The government of DRC has asked the World Bank Group and other partners for assistance in developing the Inga hydropower scheme as part of a broader economic transformation strategy for the country. Based on this request, and on lessons learned from previous engagements in large transformative infrastructure projects, the World Bank Group has agreed to work with the government, alongside other development partners, to support a long-term program that would help prepare the DRC for the opportunities and challenges associated with developing Inga’s hydropower resources, and support a range of studies designed to better understand the economic, financial, technical, environmental and social issues that will need to be addressed for the successful long-term development of Inga. Support will also focus on how the Government could create an enabling environment for a Public Private Partnership that could assist in the financing, operation, and maintenance of Inga’s hydropower resources in the future.
The World Bank Group is currently discussing this program of support with the government, partners, and other stakeholders. The support will likely be phased, with early phases focusing on local development opportunities, institutional strengthening, establishing the foundations for broader economic growth, and the range of technical studies that will be required for further decision making by the government of DRC. Decisions on World Bank financing will be taken by the World Bank’s Board of Directors.