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Belgian Congolese industrial group Groupe Forrest, owned by billionaire businessman George Forrest, is moving forward with a 900 megawatt hydropower project on the Congo River west of Kinshasa, a $2.8 billion plan that the government says is meant to cut chronic power shortages in the capital and support industrial demand.
The project, known as Kinsuka, is being developed by Kinsuka Power, a joint venture that brings together Great Lake Energy, led by entrepreneur Yves Kabongo, and Forrest Group through its subsidiary Congo Energy. DRC officials have described the project as having cleared the required administrative steps for electricity generation.
According to details shared in government briefings, the plant would be built on Kwidi Island in Kongo Central province. Feasibility studies conducted by engineering firm Tractebel and validated in 2018 provide for 12 turbines, each with a capacity of 75 megawatts, for a total installed capacity of 900 megawatts and average annual output estimated at about 7,450 gigawatt hours.
The output split is designed to serve two urgent needs. About 600 megawatts is expected to be supplied to mining companies through new high voltage transmission lines to be developed by Great Lake Energy. The remaining 300 megawatts would be allocated to Kinshasa, where outages are frequent and demand has surged with population growth and urban expansion.
Government minutes from a Feb. 6, 2026 council of ministers meeting put the project timeline at roughly five years. Officials said the development is intended to improve electricity availability and reliability for households and public services, strengthen national energy security by adding renewable generation, and support broader goals under the country’s Energy Compact.
The Kinsuka plan also arrives as Congo tries to position itself as a serious destination for large scale infrastructure finance, even as projects face familiar hurdles, complex permitting, transmission bottlenecks and the challenge of building investor confidence in long dated assets.
Groupe Forrest has been active in Congo’s electricity and infrastructure space for years through Congo Energy and related entities, including work tied to rehabilitating and strengthening parts of the national utility’s production and transmission network. Backers of Kinsuka are selling it as a step change, a project large enough to alter the reliability of supply around Kinshasa and to bring more predictable power to industry.
Next steps will focus on locking in financing and delivery timelines, then coordinating generation with transmission so the additional electricity can reach both mines and the capital’s grid.
