DR Congo is set to take an equity stake in a $270 million cross-border power line linking the country to Zambia, its finance ministry told Semafor. The move comes as electricity demand in the country\u2019s mining region rises faster than supply, with miners building metal processing plants to satisfy local policymakers\u2019 desire to keep some of the value chain in the country. The rising power needs are forcing operators to turn to diesel and build their own backup systems due to under-developed industrial options.<\/p>\n
The project, approved by Zambia\u2019s energy regulator last year<\/a>, is being developed by Enterprise Power DRC, a private power trading company, and its Zambian subsidiary. DR Congo\u2019s ministry of finance said the 200-kilometer, high-voltage line will have initial capacity of 460 MW, expandable to 550 MW, running from Kalumbila, a copper-mining town in northwestern Zambia, to Kolwezi, the heart of Congo\u2019s copper mining region. But a start date for the project is still to be set.<\/p>\n The planned equity stake is being tied to the Congolese government\u2019s wider infrastructure push after the $1.25 billion debut eurobond<\/a> it raised last month. Finance Minister Doudou Fwamba told reporters in Kinshasa<\/a> that studies showed 1 GW of additional power could double current mine production in the country, adding that DR Congo needs energy infrastructure to move from lightly processed mineral exports toward local processing and manufacturing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DR Congo is set to take an equity stake in a $270 million cross-border power line linking the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-415432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}