{UAH} WHO WILL BENEFIT THE MOST FROM AFRICA'S WORLD'S LARGEST HYDRO-DAM?

Africa to Build World’s Largest Hydro-Electric Dam, but Who Will Benefit?

December 18, 2013 | By WakingTimes | 2 RepliesMore

Inga 1 Power Station. Photo courtesy of International Rivers.

Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay
Waking Times

The Congo River traverses the continent of Africa, ending its journey in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where it spills 1.5 million cubic feet per second into the Atlantic Ocean. Now, plans are underway to harness this tremendous force of water in what promises to be the world’s largest hydropower scheme, The Grand Inga.

The Grand Inga Hydropower Project could produce up to 40,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity, more than twice the power generated by the current most powerful dam in the world—the Three Gorges Dam in China—and more than a third of the electricity currently produced in all of Africa. Yet despite the Grand Inga Project’s location in the DRC, a country where only 10 percent of the population has access to electricity, the majority of the generated power is set to flow to industries, manufacturing and urban consumers in far-away South Africa.

Rudo Sanyanga, Africa Program Director of International Rivers, recently visited the DRC and the proposed dam site.

“The Bundu Valley (that will be flooded to create a reservoir for the power plants) is largely a natural landscape interspaced with cultivated fields belonging to communities that live nearby,” Sanyanga told mongabay.com. “These communities will have to be resettled. The resettled people will face many social impacts—they will need to adjust to new life if the new area is different, and they will have to learn new means of livelihoods. The details of social impacts will depend on the resettlement plan and compensation (if any) that these people will receive. The general people in DRC will really not benefit from the Grand Inga and may be impoverished as they incur an additional debt burden.”

 

 

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