• Symbion pledges $700 million for 140 MW methane plant on Lake Kivu.
• Investment is, however, conditional on full implementation of 27 June 2025 DRC-Rwanda cease-fire.
• The project includes the first-ever cross-border power lines exporting electricity from Congo to Rwanda.

On 8 August 2025, Symbion Power LLC, the New York-based independent power producer, pledged US $700 million for a 140-megawatt methane-to-power plant on the Democratic Republic of Congo' (DRC)s side of Lake Kivu—the largest private energy investment ever announced in eastern Congo. The Final Investment Decision is explicitly conditioned on full implementation of the 27 June 2025 Washington Accord, the cease-fire and troop-withdrawal agreement brokered between the DRC and Rwanda under U.S. auspices.

The announcement represents a dramatic scale-up from Symbion’s original commitment. In January 2023, the company won a competitive tender for the Makelele gas block with plans for a 60 MW, US$300 million plant—figures that still appear on the company’s website and in parliamentary filings.

By August 2024, Symbion’s management had already signalled ambitions to expand, telling Prime Minister Judith Suminwa that administrative hurdles for the Makelele concession would be cleared “within three months” and that discussions had begun for up to 150 MW of additional capacity. The new 140 MW figure therefore merges the original Makelele licence with an adjacent expansion area, pushing the capital envelope to US $700 million—a 133 % increase in both size and projected cost.

Unlike earlier Lake Kivu projects—ContourGlobal’s 26 MW KivuWatt and Shema Power’s 56 MW Kivu 56 plant—Symbion’s proposal is the first to include cross-border transmission lines designed to export surplus Congolese power to Rwanda. This infrastructure element did not feature in any of the 2023-24 feasibility studies submitted to Kinshasa.

Its sudden appearance reflects the political logic of the Washington Accord, which tasks U.S. agencies with “leveraging private capital to lock in the cease-fire.” A State Department spokesperson told Bloomberg that the project will be eligible for DFC and Ex-Im Bank guarantees once monitors certify that Rwandan forces and M23 rebels have withdrawn from Goma and the surrounding territories.

Symbion’s earlier 60 MW plan was already the largest single methane licence ever awarded in the DRC. The company had argued that even that smaller plant could raise the national electrification rate—currently stuck at roughly 19 %—by two percentage points once connected to the fragile North Kivu grid. The supersized 140 MW scheme now positions Lake Kivu as a regional energy hub, capable of supplying nearly 15 % of Rwanda’s peak demand and of anchoring a future Central African Power Pool trading ring. For Kinshasa, the stakes are equally high: the government’s 2030 target of 32% national electrification hinges on adding 2.5 GW of new capacity, and the Symbion expansion alone would account for more than 5% of that goal.

Yet the project’s fate remains inseparable from the battlefield. Symbion CEO Paul Hinks reiterated on 8 August that “no shovels move until the Joint Security Coordination Mechanism confirms full withdrawal”—a clause absent from every previous Lake Kivu power-purchase agreement. The condition introduces a new variable into African energy finance: a security-linked draw-down schedule, in which disbursements, turbine orders, and construction milestones are contingent upon verified demilitarization steps.

For eastern Congo, the symbolism is as important as the megawatts. A decade ago, the same Makelele block was the scene of clashes between M23 and government forces; today, its methane reserves are being marketed as a peace dividend. Whether the gas beneath the lake erupts catastrophically—as scientists warn it might within the century—or is harnessed to light homes in Goma and Kigali now depends less on engineering than on the durability of a signature signed in Washington just six weeks ago.

Idriss Linge