Qualla: Mwadingusha Hydroelectric Power Station

Mwadingusha Hydroelectric Power Station: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1930, six turbines rolled into the jungle on the Lufira River and started spinning. Swiss engineers from a firm called Charmilles installed them. Belgian mining capital paid for them. The point of all this machinery was to light up the copper smelters of Lubumbashi, Likasi, Kolwezi, and Kipushi, the mining towns that were then the engine of colonial Katanga. Power lines at 120 kilovolts strung out across the savanna toward the smelters. The machines spun for 86 years without a major upgrade. They spun through the end of Belgian rule, through Mobutu's Zaire, through two devastating Congo wars, through the rebirth of the country as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When Canadian and Austrian engineers finally arrived to replace them in 2016, the original turbines were still turning, improbably, reliably, rustily.

Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mwadingusha Hydroelectric Power Station: Colonial Power, Literally

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0. The partnership that built Mwadingusha was not one company but three: the Societe generale africaine d'electricite, the Societe generale des forces hydroelectriques du Katanga, and the Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga. The last was the giant. Union Miniere controlled most of Katanga...

Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mwadingusha Hydroelectric Power Station: Six Turbines, Eighty-Six Years

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0. Each of the original turbines was rated at 11.8 megawatts, giving the station a nameplate capacity of 71 megawatts. Design margins in the 1920s were generous, and the machinery was overbuilt to a degree modern engineers find almost touching. That is part of why it lasted. The oth...

Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mwadingusha Hydroelectric Power Station: Ivanhoe, Andritz, and Cegelec

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0. Rebuilding Mwadingusha required partners SNEL could not have assembled alone. Ivanhoe Mines, a Canadian firm developing the vast Kamoa-Kakula copper project about 250 kilometers southwest, needed electricity to move the ore it hoped to produce. It agreed to finance the refurbishm...

Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mwadingusha Hydroelectric Power Station: A Current That Still Feeds the Copperbelt

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0. Mwadingusha sits about 120 kilometers north of Lubumbashi, the provincial capital. The power it generates still flows primarily to mining, though now the customers include Ivanhoe's new operations as well as Gecamines' older smelters. SNEL takes the balance and feeds it into the ...

Image: Eric Gaba (Sting - fr:Sting) | CC BY-SA 3.0