James Mackay

The Cazombo Photovoltaic Park in Angola, which will supply green energy to more than 136,000 people, has a production capacity of 25.40 MWp and batteries with a storage capacity of 75.26 MWh MCA has just energised Africa’s largest off-grid renewable energy photovoltaic park in Angola. This is the country’s first autonomous (off-grid) system with a […]

Jeannette Ilunga, Africa Works, LUSAKA | Friday 28 November, 2025 — The sovereign guarantee is dead. Across Southern Africa, the financing structure that powered a generation of electricity projects has collapsed under utility insolvency and government debt distress. Yet new power plants are still getting built and financed. The money is flowing through an entirely […]

Jeannette Ilunga, Africa Works, LUSAKA | Friday 28 November 2025 — Zambia’s mines are racing toward a power crunch: by 2031 they’ll need up to three new gigawatts of electricity, yet the investors who could build it are still holding out for a mythical “zero-risk” guarantee. Hydropower has buckled, load shedding has become routine, and […]

Mozel Chimuka, Agora Village, AfricaWorks | LUSAKA, 27 November 2025 — Eight or nine out of every ten reasons a power project fails in Zambia and Zimbabwe trace back to a single word: financing. For decades, the answer was always the same—foreign currency is unavailable, terms are not bankable, utilities will not guarantee payment, and […]

Gerald Hamuyayi, Lusaka, Saturday, 29 November, 2025 – The payments arrive like clockwork, every month, on schedule, in full. Yet the project remains classified as unbankable. International financiers examine balance sheets from state utilities and recoil, deploying risk premiums that make commercial lending impossible. Meanwhile, independent power producers across Zimbabwe and Zambia operate profitably, receive […]

Gerald Hamuyayi, Lusaka, Saturday, 29 November, 2025 – No transmission means no transition. This stark equation confronts African energy planners who watch renewable projects proliferate whilst the wires to connect them lag years behind. The Southern African Power Pool operates a sophisticated trading platform which enables independent producers to gain market access when they join […]

Gerald Hamuyayi, Lusaka, Saturday, 29 November, 2025 – Transmission can be a business. Investors will finance interconnectors if prices reflect costs and off-takers demonstrate the ability to pay. This paradigm shift to accepting that somebody other than the utility might own and maintain the wires, challenges decades of orthodoxy in African energy planning. Yet the […]

Gerald Hamuyayi, Lusaka, Saturday, 29 Nov 2025 – Energy regulators review applications, environmental authorities call for new assessments, land commissions raise questions about routes, and planning ministries challenge project timelines. A developer trying to build a cross-border transmission line watches his project split across different offices, with each approval triggering new demands from surrounding agencies. […]