DRC explores stake in $270m Zambia power link to ease copper belt crunch

The Democratic Republic of Congo is exploring taking a stake in a $270m power interconnection with Zambia to address rising electricity demand in its copper belt, as mining expansion and local processing ambitions strain an already fragile grid.

The project could eventually supply up to 550MW of power, helping to ease the region's reliance on costly diesel backup generation that many mines have had to install to keep operating through outages from state utility SNEL's ageing hydropower network. Long-term relief may ultimately depend on the long-delayed Inga III hydropower project on the Congo River, which is backed in part by the World Bank but has faced repeated financing and construction delays over more than a decade.

Power as the binding constraint

Electricity availability has become one of the clearest constraints on further growth in the DRC's Katanga and Lualaba copperbelt, where major operators including Ivanhoe, Glencore and CMOC have all invested directly in generation capacity — from imported hydropower to on-site solar and battery systems — rather than rely solely on the national grid. A cross-border link with Zambia, whose own Copperbelt shares similar power constraints, would pool regional generation capacity rather than requiring the DRC to build enough domestic supply alone.

A regional problem, a regional fix

The proposal reflected a growing recognition among regional governments that neither country's grid could unilaterally support the scale of copper and cobalt mining growth both were courting from international investors. For Kinshasa, a stake in shared cross-border infrastructure also offered a way to secure guaranteed capacity for its own mines rather than competing for scarce imported power on the open market — an approach that echoed Kamoa-Kakula's earlier strategy of directly investing in dedicated hydropower and solar supply rather than depending on SNEL alone. Officials framed the interconnector as a bridge solution, buying time for both the Zambian and Congolese copperbelts while larger, more capital-intensive projects such as Inga III worked their way through years of feasibility studies, environmental reviews and financing negotiations that have so far kept the giant Congo River site well short of its theoretical potential.

Sources

• Business Insider Africa: DR Congo moves to secure stake in $270 million Zambia power link amid mining energy crunch, 06 May 2026

Photo: The Inga hydropower dam complex on the Congo River, central to plans to expand DRC electricity supply. Χρίστος Ιμμανοελ, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.