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Cape Town - Parliament's energy portfolio committee on Tuesday recommended that the legislature ratify the Grand Inga Hydropower project with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Grand Inga Hydropower project is expected to generate about 40 000 megawatt of electricity, sufficient to power half of Africa.
However, the committee also raised concerns about political stability in the DRC. "The committee noted with concerns the security and political instability in the DRC," it said in a statement.
The DRC ambassador to South Africa, Ntshikiwane Mashimbye, suggested the committee conduct an oversight visit to his country, and said energy security was vital to development, without which conflicts would not end.
"This is not even about electricity; this is about the industrialisation of Africa. All conflicts will never come to an end until we have the requisite energy and industrialise the continent," he said.
If it goes ahead, the planned hydro power station on the Congo River will be the biggest project of its kind in the world.
The governments of South Africa and the DRC signed the Grand Inga Project treaty in October last year, and Kinshasa in March secured a $73m grant from the World Bank to help it develop the project.
South Africa has been battling to keep the country's lights on. After issuing two alerts, power utility Eskom was forced to implement load shedding on Sunday after a silo collapsed at the Majuba Power Station in Mpumalanga.
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