The Copperbelt Interconnector Shows How Africa Finances Transmission When Utilities Cannot
A Strategic Framework Agreement signed in Kinshasa on 6 October puts a privately led cross-border line on Africa's most power-hungry mining corridor. The Kalumbila-Kolwezi Interconnector Project will run about 200 kilometres between Kalumbila in Zambia and Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a thermal capacity of 700 MW and room to grow above 1 GW. The parties put construction cost at about USD 300 million. The Strategic Investment Fund of the DRC, Enterprise Power DRC (EnPower), Trafigura and Gridworks Development Partners will jointly finance, build and operate the line, with Gridworks as lead equity investor and Trafigura arranging a large share of the debt.
EnPower is already a licensed Congolese power trader and a Southern African Power Pool member. The project has its concessions, licences and authorisations in place. The announcement matters less as a single corridor than as evidence of a financing pattern that Africa's master plans have struggled to produce. The Congolese Copperbelt has a structural power deficit of more than 1 GW, according to the parties. Mines and refiners that need firm, competitively priced electricity have sat behind that gap.
On 23 September in New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched the Global Grids Accelerator, convened by UNDP, UNOPS and Sustainable Energy for All, with an initial focus on Africa and South-East Asia. The IEA's World Energy Investment 2026 outlook, as reported by ESI Africa, puts African energy investment at about USD 110 billion in 2026, roughly 3 per cent of the global total for a fifth of the world's population, or about USD 68 per person against a global average near USD 396.
Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said the country is not short of megawatts but of grid capacity, with more than 130 GW of generation projects stalled by limited network access. Against that backdrop, a short list of transactions has begun to show what bankable transmission looks like when the utility balance sheet cannot carry it alone. In December 2025, Kenya Electricity Transmission Company signed what it called Africa's first transmission PPP: a 30-year concession with Africa50 and India's Power Grid Corporation, worth about USD 311 million and requiring no public funding, covering a 400 kV line for the Baringo-Silali geothermal corridor and a 220 kV line in western Kenya.
Three markers will show whether KKIP becomes a template or a one-off. For SAPP more broadly, a privately financed interconnector that strengthens the DRC's tie into the pool is a signal that regional trade can grow without waiting for every national utility to repair its balance sheet first.