China to build Africa’s largest Hydro Power Plant in DR Congo.

The contours of a new set of agreements to build the long-shelved 40,000MW Grand Inga dam have emerged.
More than 90 politicians, businesspeople and international financiers gathered in Paris, the French capital to discuss the African infrastructure deal of the century in Paris on 17 May.

Finance and power ministers from several African countries, including South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, sat down with the African Development Bank and World Bank, alongside lawyers, bankers and the representatives of several business consortia.

Key amongst those are China's Sinohydro and the China Three Gorges corporation, which built the world's largest hydropower project across the Yangtze river, first delivering 22,500MW in 2008.

Grand Inga would be almost twice the size, and could power the whole of Africa with continuous power supply.
Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam, with between 5,0000- 6,000MW, will pail in comparison to the Grand Inga's potential 40,000 MW.

To lock down the investors, South Africa's national power company Eskom has agreed to be anchor client on the deal and buy 2,500MW of the initial 4,800MW output from the power station, after the first phase of work has been completed.
For almost a hundred years the question of how to best harness the 96 metre drop in the Congo river has been debated.

The two small hydropower plants at Inga now in place are barely turning out 1,500MW.
If this deal comes off, it would be hard to exaggerate the transformational effect of the project on Africa's industrialisation.

The construction of the first phase of the dam, to be financed by the World Bank, African Development Bank, Development Bank of Southern Africa, European Investment Bank and French Development Agency, will begin in October 2015.

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