Congo Wants 10,000 Megawatts. First It Has to Fix Its Power Company

Central Africa · Energy

A Congo Brazzaville electricity plan would lift installed capacity from about 760 megawatts today to 10,000 by 2040, starting with a binding performance contract for the state power company. Consultants presented their diagnosis of the utility in Brazzaville on 19 and 20 August.

A power company that needed an outside diagnosis

The Ministry of Energy and Hydraulics held workshops in Brazzaville on 19 and 20 August 2026 at which consultants presented their findings. The subject was Énergie Électrique du Congo, known as E2C, and the diagnostic was carried out by a consultancy identified in the ministry’s materials only as GDSC.

The purpose is to build a turnaround plan attached to a binding, measurable performance contract. That is the significant word: a performance contract makes targets enforceable rather than aspirational.

The sessions were chaired by Bruno Jean Richard Itoua, Minister of Energy and Hydraulics. The proposed measures include prepaid smart meters and network rehabilitation focused on Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire.

Prepaid metering is the quiet core of most African utility turnarounds. It addresses the collection losses that keep a state power company in deficit regardless of how much capacity it adds.

The Congo Brazzaville electricity numbers behind the ambition

The stated trajectory is steep. Installed capacity would rise from around 760 MW now to 3,000 MW by 2028, then 5,000 MW by 2030 and 10,000 MW by 2040.

Quadrupling capacity inside two years is the part to treat sceptically. These are government targets, not a project pipeline with financing attached.

The generation mix is to be broadened with solar photovoltaic plus storage, gas-fired generation and small hydro. The country’s untapped hydroelectric potential is put at roughly 27,000 MW, which is the number that makes the long-run ambition arguable.

On the demand side, the government wants 90% urban and 50% rural access by 2030, and universal access by 2035. Those are stretching targets. The national energy compact puts current access at 31.66% of the country: 38.67% in the towns and 1.01% in the countryside. Installed capacity, on the compact’s own count, is 748 megawatts. E2C’s own website says only about 600 of those megawatts are actually available.

Mission 300 is the frame

None of this is happening in isolation. Congo adopted a national energy compact in September 2025 under Mission 300, launched by the World Bank and the African Development Bank in April 2024 and endorsed by African heads of state at the Dar es Salaam energy summit in January 2025.

Mission 300 aims to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030, and it works by getting governments to sign compacts committing to utility reform in exchange for concessional finance. The performance contract for E2C is precisely the kind of commitment those compacts require.

That gives the Brazzaville plan a discipline that purely domestic announcements lack. It also gives it a scorecard that outside lenders will read.

For an investor the sequence matters more than the megawatt target: reform the utility, make it creditworthy, then independent power producers become financeable.

Turkey positions early

On 20 August, the same week as the workshops, Itoua received Turkey’s ambassador to Congo, Hilmi Ege Turemen. The ambassador described it as a courtesy call.

He also signalled where Ankara’s interest lies. “There are already investments in that sector and the question is to broaden them, perhaps in solar too,” he said, adding water infrastructure to the list.

It is important not to inflate this. No memorandum was signed, no project was named, no figure was mentioned and no capacity was discussed.

What it does show is Turkey positioning early in a market about to tender a large amount of generation. Turkish contractors have built power and infrastructure across Africa on exactly this pattern.

Why an oil producer is suddenly interested in electricity

Congo-Brazzaville is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s larger oil producers by volume, though a small economy overall, and oil rent has historically substituted for the hard work of running a utility properly. That cushion is thinning as production matures.

Diversifying into power is partly a fiscal necessity and partly a regional play. Central Africa’s grids are among the least interconnected on the continent, and surplus hydro has an export market if it can ever be built.

The entry point for outside capital is visible: a utility under a performance contract, a compact-backed reform programme and a large block of new generation to be procured. The risk is that a plan this size begins with an outside diagnostic rather than a financed project pipeline.

We were not able to establish the consultancy’s full name or where it is based. The ministry’s materials identify it only by those four letters.

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