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 In the town of Matebe, in Democratic Republic of Congo's turbulent
eastern province of North Kivu, construction crews work around the
clock to lay giant steel cylinders through which water from the
Rutshuru River will plunge 85 meters to drive three massive
hydroelectric turbines.
The Howard G. Buffet Foundation, the 60-year-old American's charity,
is bankrolling construction to the tune of $19.7 million. It hopes
the plant will help overcome chronic power shortages holding back
development in the giant central African nation when it comes online
in December.
The 13.8 megawatt facility is just the first stage in an ambitious
regional investment program drawn up by Congo's national parks
authority (ICCN) and the Virunga Foundation, a British charity
working in the giant Virunga national park in North Kivu.
For the project's second stage, Buffett has already pledged a
further $39 million towards the cost of two more hydroelectric
plants. The Belgian government has provided $4 million more, but
additional funds are still required.
The Virunga Foundation hopes to attract a total of $166 million to
build seven hydro plants as well as hotels, vocational schools and
other infrastructure in and around the national park over the next
six years.
"Hydro plants are really the game changer," Buffett said in a
telephone interview from Atlanta, Georgia. "It provides jobs, it
provides new resources, new investment. It helps keep people from
cutting the trees down for charcoal in the forests. So it's like a
win, win, win."
Over the past two decades, Buffett's foundation has pumped more than
$200 million into Africa's volatile Great Lakes region, which was
plunged into turmoil by Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Resource-rich eastern Congo was ravaged by two regional wars between
1996 and 2003 that killed millions, most from hunger and disease.
Despite vast deposits of minerals ranging from copper to diamonds
and tantalum - a key component in mobile phones - Congo languishes
next to the bottom of the U.N. development index. Two-thirds of its
nearly 70 million people live in poverty, while its rugged east is
plagued by dozens of armed groups, their ranks filled by young men
with no prospect of jobs.
A 20,000-man U.N. peacekeeping mission costing $1.4 billion a year -
the world's largest – plus billions more spent on humanitarian aid
have done little to improve conditions. Ongoing violence in and
around Virunga - including a recent spate of kidnappings - present a
deterrent to investors.
"All the U.N. does is they bring a bunch of guys in, in uniform, and
they park them (in) different strategic places, and when the going
gets tough, they run," Buffett quipped.
The Nebraska native, who has spent millions on African projects from
saving the South African rhino to hunting Lord's Resistance Army
leader Joseph Kony, said he recognized that the investment was a
gamble.
"The government could take it away tomorrow. You could have a rebel
group go in and blow it up tomorrow," he said. "That's part of why
we're doing it: because no-one else is interested in doing it."
The Howard G. Buffett Foundation is a private, family charity that
does not accept donations, with assets totaling more than $300
million, according to its last annual report. Much of its funding is
believed to have come from his father's fortune, though Howard
himself serves as a director of The Coca-Cola Company and on several
other corporate boards.
Buffett’s investments have drawn mixed reviews from analysts who
praise his commitment to the region and contributions to
conservation and agricultural development but have criticized a
heavy use of celebrity advocacy in expensive campaigns that they say
do not engage with the complexity of the issues on the ground.
GOING PRIVATE
Experts cite power shortages as one of the foremost barriers to
development in Congo. Only about 10 percent of the population has
access to electricity.
[to top of second column] |
Emmanuel de Merode, CEO of the Virunga Foundation and director of
the 7,800-square kilometer park, estimated that each additional
megawatt would create around 1,000 local jobs.
The estimate was based on a 0.2 MW pilot project that has attracted
investment from Burundian firm Savonor in a 40-tonne per day soap
factory that will use locally produced palm oil.
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's charitable foundation made an initial
investment to facilitate the project.
De Merode, a Belgian who starred in last year's Oscar-nominated,
Buffett-produced documentary about the threat of oil exploration in
Virunga, said that the initiative responded to an urgent need for
large-scale employment opportunities that only the private sector
could create.
But some local residents see the initiative as yet another foreign
imposition whose priorities do not match their own.
Chrispin Mvano, an independent researcher and journalist in North
Kivu, criticized park authorities for failing to collaborate with
local communities, who wonder whether they will benefit from the new
electricity.
"We'd say that Emmanuel de Merode has become the president of ...
the National Republic of Virunga," said Mvano.
He called for greater support to agriculture, the dominant economic
activity in the area, and existing small-scale hydroelectric
projects.
Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to home
to roughly half the world's remaining 900 mountain gorillas, is a
cause celebre among conservationists.
But the protected status of the park, created in 1925 by the Belgian
colonial government, is resented by many of the more than four
million people who live near it but are prevented from cultivating
its rich soil.
In a letter to de Merode last month, activists from the southern
edge of the park complained that park rangers routinely violate the
boundaries and have seized their land.
"Before being a world patrimony, (Virunga) is a local patrimony,"
Mvano said.
De Merode acknowledged "enormous tensions" with local populations in
enforcing park limits but said that industrialization was the only
long-term solution for the region.
Even those who agree, say the project remains a long shot to bring
development to one of the world's most unsettled regions. Innocent
Gasigwa, a spokesman for civil society in the territory of Rutshuru,
said he supported the hydroelectric projects but warned: "If just
one war breaks out again, it's over."
(Reporting By Aaron Ross; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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