Congo Secures $1 Billion From World Bank to Revive World’s Largest Hydropower Project

The World Bank has pledged $1 billion to help the Democratic Republic of Congo prepare as it prepares for the next phase of what could be the world’s biggest hydropower project.

The bank plans to commit $250 million toward Inga III, a portion of the Grand Inga hydropower complex. The project builds on earlier phases, Inga I, a 351-megawatt plant commissioned in 1972, and Inga II, a 1,424-megawatt facility launched a decade later.

The Inga site on the Congo River, the world’s third-largest river by volume, has the potential to eventually generate around 40,000 megawatts of electricity. This is nearly twice the capacity of China’s Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest hydropower facility at 22,500 megawatts, according to Bloomberg.

However, progress has been stalled for years due to conflict, corruption scandals, and high costs.

Inga III forms part of the World Bank’s Mission 300 program, which has an ambitious target to bring electricity to 300 million Africans by 2030. The World Bank President Ajay Banga says the broader effort could attract up to $85 billion in private investment.

Once completed, the project, expected to cost $10 billion, could generate 11,000 megawatts of power, which is more than three times Congo’s current capacity.

The first $250 million tranche will fund technical studies, support economic development, reform the state-owned electricity company, and help attract private developers for the facility on the Congo River.

Congo’s government is keen on tripling its citizens’ access to power by 2030. A $36 billion plan to develop the country’s power sector, where only about 20% of the country’s more than 100 million people currently have access to electricity, was unveiled at a Mission 300 conference in Dar es Salaam in January.