Diesel Shortage Leaves Congo-Brazzaville Networks Running on Nine Hours of Grid Power

Telecom networks in the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) are receiving an average of nine hours of grid electricity per day, with diesel generators supplying only six hours of backup, according to regulator ARPCE. The gap has triggered days of service disruption across all or part of the national territory.

ARPCE issued a formal notice to consumers and all users of electronic communications services. It stated that public electronic communications networks have for several days experienced disruptions due to current energy supply difficulties. The outages are not confined to one region; the regulator says the problem affects all or part of the country.

Why can diesel not fill the gap?

In normal conditions, operators would lean on generator backup. That option has collapsed. ARPCE says telecommunications operators cannot compensate for the electricity deficit because diesel supply itself is failing, starving the generators that power towers and technical sites.

The numbers show the scale of the shortfall. Helios Towers, which ARPCE names directly, needs roughly 100,000 litres of diesel per week — about 400,000 litres per month — to run generators at the 550 relay antennas it manages across the country. That volume, presumably, is not currently available.

The economics were already unfavourable before the shortage. According to the Ecofin news agency, industry body the GSMA has estimated that generator-produced electricity in the region typically costs three to four times as much as grid-supplied power. Operators in Congo-Brazzaville therefore face both a supply squeeze and a structural cost penalty of up to 300% on every diesel-powered hour.

What services are affected?

Power cuts and fuel shortages are disrupting technical sites, network cores and data centres. The consequences, per ARPCE, range from deterioration in quality of service to partial or total unavailability of voice, internet and mobile money services delivered over mobile networks.

For a market where mobile money is a core financial channel, total unavailability of that service carries direct commercial weight. The regulator's consumer notice amounts to an acknowledgement that operators cannot currently guarantee continuity.

Is a fix coming?

No immediate solution exists. ARPCE says it is working closely with the Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (SNPC) to optimise fuel supply, which places the near-term remedy in the hands of the national oil company rather than the operators.

Alternative energy sources offer little relief for now. As Ecofin points out, no local deployment plans for solar power or battery storage have been disclosed. It is not even clear whether either technology is available in the market, meaning operators have no visible decarbonisation or resilience pathway beyond diesel.

What changes for operators and tower companies?

The episode is a reminder of how dependent much of Africa's communications infrastructure remains on diesel as backup fuel. For tower companies such as Helios Towers, fuel logistics now sit at the centre of network availability, not at its margins.

A site portfolio consuming 400,000 litres a month is exposed to any interruption in the fuel distribution chain. With grid power at nine hours per day and backup at six, Congolese networks are operating on roughly 15 hours of power in every 24 — a deficit that no level of network engineering can engineer away.

Until SNPC stabilises diesel distribution, ARPCE's notice implies further degradation of service quality across voice, data and mobile money, and operators will keep absorbing generator costs that the GSMA puts at three to four times grid prices.