IN SHORT: Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are advancing a $1.5 billion, 1,450-kilometre electricity transmission line connecting Angola’s Malanje province to the DRC’s Fungurume in the Copperbelt, confirmed during a diplomatic meeting between Angolan President Lourenço and a high representative of DRC President Tshisekedi on May 15. The project will export 2,000 megawatts of surplus Angolan hydropower to the DRC mining sector, which is one of the world’s most energy-intensive and one of the most chronically undersupplied. Construction is targeted to begin in 2026 through Meridia Energy, a Somagec subsidiary. A second interconnection between Zaire province in Angola and Inga in the DRC is also planned.
Angola and the DRC are building the largest electricity interconnection project in the history of two countries that together hold the most significant electricity generation potential on the African continent, at a moment when the DRC’s cobalt and copper mines are being asked to supply the global clean energy transition while running on diesel generators because the grid cannot reach them.
The meeting at the Angolan presidential palace on May 15 formalised progress on a project that has been discussed at a conceptual level for years but is now entering a specific implementation phase with named financiers, a named contractor and a targeted construction start.
- The 2,000MW transmission capacity is designed to address one of the most acute energy supply contradictions in the global clean energy transition: the DRC holds approximately 70% of the world’s known cobalt reserves and significant copper and lithium deposits, all of which are essential for EV batteries and clean energy infrastructure. But the mines that extract these minerals operate on diesel generators at enormous cost because the national grid does not reliably reach the Copperbelt. Cobalt and copper produced using diesel-powered electricity carries a carbon footprint that contradicts the clean energy transition narrative it is supposed to support. Angolan hydropower, generated by the 2,070MW Laúca dam on the Kwanza River, provides a renewable energy alternative that would genuinely decarbonise DRC mining operations.
- The 1,450-kilometre transmission distance is significant. It represents one of the longest individual bilateral power interconnections being developed anywhere in Africa. The engineering challenge of building and maintaining a high-voltage line of that length through terrain that includes portions of both countries with limited road access is substantial. Meridia Energy, the Somagec subsidiary contracted to develop the project, has experience with large-scale African infrastructure in challenging terrain, but the execution risk of a 1,450km line is real and will require active contract management and monitoring.
- Angola’s power generation surplus is the enabling condition for this project. The Laúca dam, commissioned in 2017 and expanded since, generates more electricity than Angola’s domestic grid can currently absorb. Angola has been investing in expanding its transmission network to connect the dam’s output to population centres, but the pace of grid expansion has lagged generation capacity. Exporting the surplus to the DRC solves Angola’s utilisation problem while solving the DRC’s supply problem: a bilateral transaction with genuine commercial logic on both sides.
- The DRC minister’s statement that the project will “meet the immediate energy needs of 100 million Congolese while Grand Inga develops” is significant in one specific respect: it acknowledges that Grand Inga, the 40,000MW mega-project that has been in planning for decades, is not going to be operational on any near-term timeline. The Angola-DRC interconnection is being positioned as the bridge solution that addresses the DRC’s energy gap while the continent waits for Grand Inga’s financing and construction challenges to be resolved.
- The Angola Luau solar park, commissioned on May 6 and the largest off-grid solar installation in Africa at 31.85MW with 75.26MWh of battery storage, provides the complementary story. Financed at approximately $102 million through Standard Chartered and KfW, the Luau facility eliminates 18 million litres of annual diesel consumption in a remote border area of Angola’s Moxico province. It was built and is operated by Meridia Energy, the same contractor engaged on the Angola-DRC interconnection. The track record on Luau, which was delivered on time and is generating reliable power in one of Angola’s most remote and logistically challenging locations, is the evidence base that supports confidence in Meridia’s capacity to execute the much larger interconnection project.
DRC Infrastructure Minister Alexis Gakuru-Mwanakabwe: “This project, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, will also help meet the immediate energy needs of the populations of both countries as we develop this facility for our continent.”
The Bigger Picture: The Angola-DRC power interconnection is the kind of bilateral infrastructure project that the African Union’s energy integration agenda has been calling for since the first continental energy master plan was published in 2006. Two neighbouring countries with complementary energy profiles, one with surplus generation and one with excess demand, are building the transmission infrastructure to balance them. The commercial logic is unambiguous. The financing is identified. The contractor is named. The construction timeline is specific. What it needs now is execution. If Meridia delivers the Malanje-Fungurume line on schedule and at cost, it will be one of the most consequential energy infrastructure completions in African history: clean power reaching the mines that produce the minerals for the global clean energy transition, generated by African hydropower, owned and operated by African states. That is what energy sovereignty looks like.
Source: AllAfrica via ANGOP / Ecofin Agency / PV Magazine Africa, May 15, 2026
