Refining copper with HVDC: A 1700-km-long transmission line thrusts southeastward through Zaire to power a vital copper source in the interior

The 2.6-million-square-kilometer (million-square-mile) area of the Republic of Zaire — formerly the Belgian Congo — extends more than halfway across equatorial Africa, from a narrow corridor on the South Atlantic to Tanzania on the east. The majority of this country, which is one third the size of the U.S., consists of a plateau 300–500 meters above sea level. The most densely populated (and most developed) regions of the country are the Lower Zaire, including the coastal area and the capital, Kinshasa (see map, Fig. 1), and Shaba province in the far southeast corner.