Zimbabwe is working on making regulatory changes on the electricity pricing regime to allow producers to sell at competitive rates to recoup their costs.
This was revealed by Energy and Power Development minister, July Moyo, last Friday during a Southern African Power Pool Management (SAPP) committee meeting held in Victoria Falls.
Zimbabwe and other countries in the region are failing to generate electricity to meet rising demand, largely due to climate change and poor maintenance of infrastructure.
A recent parliamentary report indicated that the country’s electricity generation capacity shortfall was close to 4000 megawatts due to growing demand.
Moyo acknowledged that more players were needed to generate electricity to meet demand of citizens and industry in southern Africa.
“With the regulatory environment changing, we expect to see more and more private sector participation in both generation and transmission investments,” he said.
“The increase in energy trading on the regional competitive markets will allow the SAPP Coordination Centre to generate enough income which in turn will reduce the burden on Member Utilities.”
Moyo said the SAPP was also working on the Regional! Transmission Infrastructure Financing Facility to unlock blended financing for electricity generation infrastructure.
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“The proposal is an innovative approach to fund transmission lines and accelerating the development of regional interconnectors,” he said.
“The facility when set up is expected to attract new sources of finance from the private sector as well as green climate funds and provide an opportunity for the acceleration of project development.”
“The current United States administration is also open to collaborating on coal project development in Africa..."
, recognising that the future of electricity on the continent may significantly depend on coal.”
The SAPP was created in August 1995 at the SADC summit held in South Africa when member states excluding Mauritius signed an Inter-Governmental Memorandum of Understanding for the formation of an electricity power pool in the region.
The SAPP has twelve member countries represented by their respective national power Utilities organised through SADC.
SAPP has twenty two members - 12 national power utility members, five operating members and five market participants.
The SAPP is the oldest and most advanced Power Pool in Africa.
