Scramble to Dam the Congo Keeps Africans in the Dark (original)
A lucrative hydropower scheme proposed for the Congo River could become
Africa’s next great scramble. Led by the World Energy Council, major
industries, banks, and governments will soon meet in London to seek
their piece of the US$80 billion Grand Inga project – the world’s
largest hydropower installation. The scheme is being promoted as a
development venture to electrify the African continent, where two in
every three people now lack access to electricity. Hundreds of
officials and big money interests, including two firms debarred by the
World Bank for bribery, will attend the Council’s April forum, but
Inga’s most vulnerable constituents remain excluded.
The Council has refused to invite Africans monitoring the Inga project,
subjecting them – unlike any other participants – to government
authorization. Yet the Council invited these same individuals – a small
delegation from affected communities and public interest groups – to
the last Inga forum. The local peoples' presence at that meeting
provided an essential reality check after one official stated that
Grand Inga required no resettlement. In fact, 8,000 villagers face
displacement. Yet the Council and other project backers are now
steadfastly refusing to include civil society in discussions. If Inga
is meant to light up Africa, then why are its backers keeping Africans
in the dark over project planning?
For starters, Africa's unelectrified communities aren't really Inga’s
intended client base. The project’s huge price tag covers only the cost
of the hydropower plant and long-distance transmission lines to
Africa’s mining and industrial heartlands, and urban centers in South
Africa, Egypt and other distant countries. Local distribution lines
will not be included, meaning the project's electricity won't reach
even a fraction of the continent’s half billion people not yet
connected to the grid. Building a distribution network that would
actually “light up Africa” would increase the project’s cost
exponentially. Instead of direct access to Inga’s energy, the project’s
social development plan is based on trickle-down economics, a model
notorious for its elusive benefits and poor record in Africa’s fight
against poverty.
Exploiting Inga could also further fuel Africa’s “resource curse”. The
project’s enormous budget and bountiful contracts could devolve Inga
into a corruption-riddled white elephant. Trying to stop such a fate
would require unwavering scrutiny in the tamest of political
environments, and is impossible, some argue, in today’s Congo. By
design, Inga would centralize a vast store of the region’s electric and
financial power, a development model that can foster tensions and civil
wars. More decentralized energy development would spread wealth and
electricity more evenly within the country, helping Congo move away
from its conflictive past.
No stranger to the hydro curse that has afflicted so many African
nations, Congo (then Zaire) built two dams at Inga in the 1970s and
'80s, which degraded local living standards despite promises to the
contrary. The dams also produced a crushing debt burden for the country
rather than a sustainable industrial base. Inga I and Inga II exemplify
the history of large dams, which have left a trail of sorrows for
affected people and disproportionately small gains for Africa’s poor.
One of the many critical lessons learned from past dams is the need for
open and inclusive planning from the beginning. While participation
alone can’t guarantee success, it is key for improving development
outcomes.
Today, thousands of villagers living near the Inga rapids anxiously
await information about the project's potential impacts on their lives,
wondering if their rights and needs will again be ignored. Fifty
million Congolese, and hundreds of millions more Africans, wonder how
long until their communities will be electrified, and if Grand Inga
could speed up or slow down that wait. Citizens from Congo to South
Africa are wondering who may profit from this $80bn investment and if
it is at the expense, rather than the benefit, of Africans. These are
Inga’s most vulnerable stakeholders who are barred from participating
in the Council’s April forum.
[This editorial was written ahead of the April 21-22 meeting. View the updated version which was revised after the end of the meeting and appeared in several publications.]