The Democratic Republic of Congo's government adopted a bill on the Grand Inga hydroelectric project at a March 27 Cabinet meeting. The legislation was presented by Minister of Water Resources and Electricity Aimé Sakombi Molendo and approved after debate, according to the official readout.

The bill is framed as a measure to safeguard sovereignty, aimed at protecting a strategic national asset and ensuring state control. The government says it aligns Congolese law with the scale of the project, while supporting industrialization, expanding electricity access, generating wealth and increasing public revenues. It also includes provisions for local communities and environmental safeguards.

The adoption follows a fast-tracked timeline set days earlier by President Félix Tshisekedi. A March 20 Cabinet readout said he had called for the bill to be examined quickly, adopted on March 27 and submitted to parliament by March 31.

In the same directive, the president instructed relevant ministries and the Kongo Central provincial government to finalize memoranda of understanding with the Agency for the Development and Promotion of the Grand Inga Project (ADPI-RDC) to speed up the project's governance setup.

The Grand Inga project is a large-scale hydroelectric programme planned on the Congo River in Kongo Central province, expected to provide more than 40,000 MW of capacity. It is being developed in phases. After Inga 1 (351 MW) and Inga 2 (1,424 MW), built in the 1970s and 1980s, the next phase, Inga 3, is in preparation.

The World Bank says several options remain under study, with potential capacity ranging from 3,000 to 11,000 MW depending on the configuration. It adds that preparatory work and construction could take about a decade, given the project's technical, political and financial complexity.

Ronsard Luabeya