White Elephant Redux:Grand Inga Project

Akin dissects what may become the benchmark in White Elephant projects - The Grand Inga Dam Project:

When I read of the instigation of the largest dam project in the world being planned for Africa in a hydro-electric configuration last week, I skipped the news as one of those grand schemes of delusion...I find it interesting that for a project that would affect so many African countries, as it also involves 7 African countries with the intention of distributing electricity from DR Congo to Egypt in the North, Nigeria in the West and South Africa down South is coordinated by the World Energy Council in London.
This represents the Genesis of why this project probably serves no particular purpose to Africans in general, it is a project that would cost $80 billion and a good deal of that would not go to Africans but we would be saddled with the debts...There is no people-driven element about this grand scheme, it is a résumé boosting project that would be completed by 2022 and would probably collapse in 3 years with the big names involved having moved on to another grand white elephant.

For the forseeable future, however, there are many more practical and beneficial African hydro schemes. Talk of Inga is irresponsible and should cease, pending some clear watershed in the Congo's own stability. The country is riven by civil wars, badly governed and fatally wounded by its own sprawling geography. Supporters of Inga should be forced to shelve any financing maneuverings until the Congo sorts out politically and socially. Today, the country is essentially a fiction, propped up by the armed forces of the United Nations and the money of foreign donors.