Westcor power project still viable, needs review

KINSHASA – A HUGE project to boost southern Africa’s power supply was still viable, but would be reviewed, the chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said.

Speaking at a press conference in Kinshasa at the close of the recent SADC summit, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila said the summit had reached the conclusion that the US$5 billion (N$38 billion) Western Corridor (Westcor) project to build a hydropower plant on the Congo River ‘is still in place, and viable, but will be re-examined so as to involve all the member states’.The Westcor power company was set up in 2005 by five of the SADC’s 15 members – the DRC, South Africa, Angola, Namibia and Botswana.The company is due to start work next year on Inga 3, a 3 500 megawatt hydroelectric plant at the Inga Dam complex in lower DRC, where two existing hydropower plants are working at only 60 per cent capacity. The Westcor project involves building a 3 000 km transmission line linking the DRC with the four partner countries.Since signing the agreement, the DRC has pushed for the agreement to be expanded to include an US$80 billion project, Grand Inga, which could in theory harness enough power for the entire African continent.The DRC president’s latest announcement about a revision to Inga 3 to involve more SADC members is likely to be seen by the partners in Westcor as another step in that direction. Westcor’s chief executive said last October that the DRC should concentrate on Inga 3 before embarking on Grand Inga, which investors have so far been reluctant to fund.Congolese media have been asking whether even Inga 3 would be feasible until the national electricity company was able to maintain its equipment.Analysts say that work has been held up by disagreement over which of the two Inga projects to choose.At his press conference, Kabila was asked what the DRC could expect from SADC now that he was its chairman.To loud applause, he said ‘nothing at all’, as the Congolese, he said, should rely on themselves. -Business Report