On a wooden stake planted in Africa’s equatorial forest, a small hand-painted sign reads: “Here will be erected the water intake of the Inga 6 power plant.”
The hopeful claim refers to the latest plan to realise one of Africa’s largest and longest stalled white elephants: Grand Inga, the world’s biggest hydropower dam, not far from where the river Congo meets the sea.
Located in the far western extreme of the Democratic Republic of Congo, several dams and hydropower plants would deliver 42,000 megawatts, nearly twice the size of the world’s largest power station, the Three Gorges Dam in China. If built, it would double the electricity production capacity of Africa and resolve what Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, calls Africa’s “energy apartheid”.