The number is so large it stops sounding real. One hundred thousand megawatts of hydropower potential (roughly 13% of the world’s total) sitting inside a single country. The Democratic Republic of Congo currently harnesses only about 3% of that. On the afternoon of 27 August, the DRC Investment Forum will dedicate a half-day to closing that gap.
The Energy Half-Day is built around a simple but brutal arithmetic: you cannot process minerals without power. You cannot run a cold chain for agriculture without power. You cannot industrialise without power. Yet the DRC remains one of the least electrified countries on the planet, with industry and mining relying heavily on expensive, polluting diesel gensets. The same rivers that constrain transport during rainy season represent a permanent, renewable, under-monetised asset. The question is how to turn that asset into watts.
“The DRC’s energy story is not a technical problem. The water falls. The rivers flow,” said Ben Leyka, CEO of DRC Invest, the forum organiser. “It is a capital problem and a delivery problem. This half-day is designed to match the projects with the money and the execution partners to finally build them.”
The core tension running through the half-day is between grand scale and local reality. On one hand, the Inga dams and other mega-hydro sites could power half the continent. On the other, rural communities and small-scale industries need mini-grids and off-grid solutions today, not in a decade. The forum’s organisers have structured the discussions to hold both ideas at once.
For large-scale generation and transmission, the conversation will focus on private sector participation. Mining houses alone require hundreds of megawatts of reliable power, and they currently pay some of the highest industrial electricity tariffs in the region because of diesel dependence. Independent power producers, captive power arrangements, and public-private partnerships for transmission lines are all on the table. The question is what policy and tariff reforms are needed to make those models work.
For renewable energy and climate finance, the discussion moves to bankability. Solar, wind, hydro, and off-grid solutions all face the same hurdle: structuring projects that commercial lenders will touch. Blended finance, guarantees, concessional instruments, and carbon markets will feature prominently in the conversations. The DRC’s hydropower potential is vast, but potential does not pay for turbines. Investors need to see a clear path to returns.
For rural electrification and productive use, the focus shifts to economic anchors. The mistake of past electrification programmes, organisers note, was treating rural power as a social service rather than an economic investment. A mini-grid serving only household lighting is hard to sustain. A mini-grid powering a rice mill, a cassava processor, or a mining cooperative has revenue. Those productive use cases will be front and centre in the discussions, alongside public-private models for reaching the most remote communities.
The Investment Discovery Sessions for energy will present pre-screened projects across generation, transmission, and off-grid access. Organisers report a strong pipeline including hydro rehabilitation, solar PV, wind, biomass, and mini-grid clusters. Each project will face a panel of investors and financial experts, with the same question repeated across the room: is this bankable or not?
What makes the Energy Half-Day different from the usual power sector conference is the refusal to separate the technical from the financial. Too many energy gatherings in Africa produce ambitious project lists and zero signed cheques. The DRC Investment Forum’s model is the opposite. The projects are pre-vetted. The investors are in the room. The matchmaking platform is already live. The question is not whether the DRC has hydro potential. The question is which projects leave Kinshasa with a term sheet.
The Energy Half-Day is the second of three sector verticals at the Forum. The morning of 27 August covers Agribusiness, and 28 August is dedicated to Critical Minerals. The full three-day programme also includes the Congo2050 NextGen day for youth-led ventures, an expo floor, and a matchmaking platform that facilitated 510 confirmed meetings in 2025.
Registration is open at www.drcinvestforum.com. Visa support letters are available by contacting eventhost@drcinvest.com.
About the DRC Investment Forum:
The DRC Investment Forum is the premier annual platform dedicated to deploying capital, driving growth, and ensuring sustainability in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It brings together international investors, businesses, and policymakers to forge sustainable partnerships and accelerate economic transformation across agriculture, energy, and mining. The 2026 edition builds on the success of the 2025 Forum, which showcased nearly 50 bankable projects requiring over seven billion dollars in investment.
