Zimbabwe electricity access target rises to 520,000 connections annually
The national compact signed under Mission 300 commits Harare to reaching every household by 2030, and sets out how far the utility must move to do it. Private distribution and retail licences were due in the first quarter of this year, opening a market ZETDC has held alone.
Zimbabwe has committed to connecting 520,000 households a year between now and 2030, made up of 320,000 on the grid and 200,000 beyond it. The country’s National Energy Compact, signed under Mission 300 and carrying a declaration from President Emmerson Mnangagwa, puts the current pace at 40,000 to 60,000 households a year.
The arithmetic underneath that gap is the part the compact states plainly. Zimbabwe adds around 118,000 households a year, so at the present rate the share of the country with electricity falls rather than rises. The document records 1.76 million households with an electricity service at the end of 2024 and 2.55 million without one, against a projected 4.86 million households by 2030.
Access itself is measured two ways in the same document. The 2022 census put 62 per cent of the population with electricity, 33.7 per cent on the grid and 28.3 per cent off it, while the more recent National Electrification Strategy estimate is 41 per cent. The compact attributes the difference to a mismatch between the rate of connections and the rate at which households are forming.
Money is the second constraint, and the compact is specific about its scale. Electrification currently draws US$45 million to US$50 million a year through the Rural Electrification Fund and ZETDC. Reaching universal access needs US$3.397 billion by 2030, an average of US$566 million a year. Connection fees remain beyond most households, which also carry the cost of running infrastructure from the grid to their own homes, leaving customers unconnected inside areas the network already reaches.
The answer the compact reaches for is other people’s balance sheets. It commits the government to issuing secondary distribution and retail licences for private participation in expanding and managing the distribution network, and to finalising third-party grid access regulations, both dated to the first quarter of 2026. Private suppliers of solar home systems are already connecting 20,000 to 30,000 households a year on the draft strategy’s own count, and the Presidential Rural Solarization Scheme targets 200,000 standalone systems annually, taking 1kW installations to more than a million rural households by 2030.
Of the US$9.13 billion the compact seeks across the whole sector, US$4.42 billion is expected from private investors. Beneath that sits 1,607km of new transmission and distribution line and a commitment to bring technical losses down from between 18 and 20 per cent to 14 per cent by the end of 2030. Zimbabwe and Zambia meet at Livingstone in November for the Zimbabwe-Zambia Energy Projects Summit, on a river both draw from, and the question of who is licensed to sell the power once it is generated will travel there with them.
Photo: Tatenda Mapigoti, Unsplash
