• MCA commissioned the Luau Photovoltaic Park in Angola on Monday, setting a continental record with 31.85 megawatts of off-grid solar capacity

• The €87 million plant supplies clean energy to more than 90,000 people, eliminating diesel generation entirely through solar power and battery storage

• The facility anchors Angola’s Rural Electrification Project targeting 46 solar mini-grids and over one million people by 2027

 MCA, the Lisbon-based infrastructure group, commissioned the Luau Photovoltaic Park on Monday, surpassing its own continental record for off-grid solar capacity with a 31.85-megawatt plant. The project replaces diesel generation entirely with solar power and battery storage in a remote town on Angola’s border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The plant, built at a cost exceeding €87 million and equipped with 75.26 megawatt-hours of battery storage, covers nighttime supply without any fossil fuel backup, according to a statement by the company. It incorporates 54,912 solar panels, created more than 200 local jobs during construction, and is projected to save around 18 million litres of fuel annually.

“This is a project that goes far beyond the technical aspect: it represents a commitment to communities that, for decades, have lived without access to energy,” Manuel Couto Alves, chairman of MCA, said in the company’s statement. Alves called the Luau and Cazombo parks the start of a programme set to expand through 2027.

The inauguration positions Angola as home to two of Africa’s top off-grid solar installations. The Luau plant displaces the record previously held by MCA’s own Cazombo Solar Photovoltaic Park — also in Angola — which features 25.3 megawatts of solar capacity and 59.46 megawatt-hours of storage, according to the company. Angola’s President João Lourenço and Energy Minister João Baptista Borges attended Monday’s ceremony.

Continental Reach

The Luau plant is the second delivery under Angola’s Rural Electrification Project, a broader programme targeting 60 communes through 46 autonomous solar mini-grids with a projected impact on more than one million people, according to MCA. The European Union recognised the programme under its Global Gateway strategy, which channels European capital into energy, digital, and infrastructure projects in partner countries.

Financing for the Luau facility was structured by Standard Chartered, the London-based lender, with a guarantee of approximately one billion euros provided by Germany’s export credit agency Euler Hermes, reinsured by Portugal’s Cosec and South Korea’s K-Sure, according to the company. The Angolan state-owned electricity producer PRODEL Ep serves as project developer.

The plant sits at the terminus of the Lobito Corridor, the 1,300-kilometre rail and transport axis that European and American investors have backed as a potential transcontinental trade route linking Angola’s Atlantic coast to landlocked DRC and Zambia. The corridor’s proximity to DRC’s mineral belt has drawn growing infrastructure financing from Brussels and Washington. As Angola pushes to electrify its 46 targeted communes before 2027, the pace of MCA’s remaining deliveries will test whether the rural electrification model can scale across one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most geographically dispersed populations.

Idriss Linge