Congo's electricity regulator issues about forty titles in one morning and counts a 2,684.8 MW pipeline.

For an independent power producer waiting on a title in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the regulator has attached a number to how fast it is now clearing files. Close to forty favourable opinions and certificates of conformity were handed to operators in public at a single event in Kinshasa. The electricity regulator, the Autorite de Regulation du secteur de l'Electricite, used the occasion, which it titled the "Matinee de la Regulation", to mark the first hundred days of its new administration under the patronage of the Ministry of Hydraulic Resources and Electricity, and passed a record of the period to the ministry for the government.

Its directorate general also presented a projected pipeline of energy investment put at more than 2.3 billion United States dollars, corresponding to 2,684.8 MW of additional capacity. Assessment: a figure compiled this way records what developers have lodged with the regulator rather than what has reached financial close, so the market reform on display is one of administrative speed rather than of new law.

A digital platform for receiving, handling and following complaints from operators and consumers was presented at the same event. The implication is that a generator or an offtaker in dispute with a counterparty now has a channel into the regulator that leaves a record behind it.

The morning closed with memoranda of understanding signed with three bodies working in the sector, among them a government unit that compiles development indicators and a Congolese association for renewable and decentralised energy.

For a holder of a power purchase agreement, the hundred-day total is less useful than what comes after it: whether the next batch of titles moves at the same pace, whether the complaints platform produces decisions that can be cited in a dispute, and how much of the 2,684.8 MW the regulator counted turns into signed and funded capacity.