The area covering Kin Mart, Hôtel Léon, Onatra, Kin Mazière, GG Mart, Akram hospital, and the headquarters of the Provincial Directorate of the General Directorate of Migration (DGM) is often without electricity for several hours, and this happens daily. Generators – turned on in unison up to the front of the Memling hotel – make life unbearable due to the noise pollution generated by these machines. Power outages have become a national sport in this part of the capital, without stirring the concern of the SNEL authorities, let alone the supervisory ministry. Inquired about this persistent situation, an employee stationed at the electrical post just off Luambo Makiadi Avenue justifies these outages by the "inability" of their transformers to "support" the loads in this area.

Indeed, this poor electricity supply is almost universal in the city of Kinshasa. No district is spared from outages. Some experience it daily. In Mbudi, for example, a district that saw the installation of a 220 KV electrical substation inaugurated at the end of 2023 by President Félix Tshisekedi, electricity remains a luxury. Power cuts and load shedding have become a national sport in this district, as in many others, despite the presence of this substation and its associated distribution networks. Districts that used to enjoy near-full-time electricity 10 or 20 years ago now receive it sporadically. Even though the country's low electrification rate no longer harms anyone, the DRC has allowed itself to further regress in the sector. Less than 10% of the Congolese population today has access to electricity, according to the report on the energy divide published at the end of 2019 by the economic service of the French embassy in the DRC. In this range of 10% general access to electricity, a total of 35% are in urban areas (50% in Kinshasa) and less than 1% in rural areas. These figures have regressed even further in 2024.

"A very noticeable decline," according to Emmanuel Musuyu, executive secretary of CORAP, a coalition of civil society organizations working on monitoring reforms and public action, including the Inga project. "You remember the head of state had spoken of more than 20% [electricity access rate, ed.], CORAP had reacted by demonstrating that we were less than 10%. The Authority for the Regulation of the Electricity Sector [ARE, ed.] in its annual report of 2023 had informed that we were at 6.7%. The question is: what kind of magic has been applied for us to go from 6.7% to 20% when it should be visible? To increase the access rate, one must produce. How many dams have we built? We can talk about Busanga and Zongo II, but to what extent has this contributed to the access rate to electricity?" he asked in an interview shared especially on social networks.

For a country of 2,345,409 km2, the DRC does not have a national-scale integrated electricity distribution network. Only three poles or regional networks, moreover poorly interconnected, have tried to exist since the Zaire era. These include the Western network composed of the provinces of Kinshasa and Kongo Central; the Eastern network including the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu; and the Southern network counting the provinces of Lualaba and Haut-Katanga, primarily thanks to mining companies. Indeed, the country has long imported electricity from Zambia to power its mines. This is due to the failures in the transportation of electricity from the Inga dam (Kongo Central). The Southern network then used a supply corridor for electricity imports from Zambia. However, with funding from the World Bank, the high-voltage transmission line between Inga and Kolwezi was rehabilitated and its capacity doubled from 500 MW to 1120 MW to serve the miners of Katanga who will be less dependent on electricity imports from Zambia. In this energy quagmire, SNEL and the Congolese State are always responsible. Despite the law on the liberalization of the electricity sector promulgated in 2014, SNEL is still managing 95% of the electricity sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as it awaits investors who have been dragging their feet for nearly 10 years now.

Dido Nsapu