Several reports published in recent days indicate that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has continued to push for investment in “restarting” the Grand Inga Dam project, with South Africa a major customer for the power from this, the largest hydroelectric generating station design in the world. An effort appears to be underway, spearheaded by the New Development Bank (NDB) but involving four other multilateral development banks in Africa as well, to resume development and construction of the project. At least one of those banks, the African Development Bank, wants to “scale down” the 40 GW project, and is reported to be meeting in Kinshasa this week with Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi.
South Africa’s President Ramaphosa raised the urgency of the Grand Inga project in order to challenge French President Emmanuel Macron at Macron’s New Global Financing Pact Summit in Paris on June 23, 2023, which was essentially a counter-meeting to the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. Over the past year, Ramaphosa has gotten support from D.R. Congo President Tshisekedi.
Now, according to Bloomberg—this is an “investment platform” for Africa (the account is also published on Mining.com “five development finance institutions have joined forces to advance the world’s largest electricity-generation project, the Grand Inga hydropower complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” According to the account, the NDB founded by the BRICS nations is collaborating with the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), the Industrial Development Corporation (a South African state bank), the African Development Bank, and the African Export-Import Bank. “These five parties have taken the initiative … in terms of getting this goal off the ground,” according to the DBSA’s chief risk officer Mpho Kubelo.
