Construction can now begin near Kafue Town in Zambia’s Lusaka Province. Globeleq has reached financial close on the 40MWac Kafue solar project, with US$52.1m committed by FMO and British International Investment and a 25-year power purchase agreement with ZESCO in place. Globeleq also owns 51% of Lunsemfwa Hydro Power Company and is developing solar with battery storage at Leopards Hill. It sells to private industrial customers as well as to ZESCO. Here, Alasdair Martin, Director, Private Customer Solutions, writes for ENN on what buyers of industrial power in Southern Africa now want from the companies that supply them.

Zambia has reached its 2026 target of 1,000MW of solar, with 1,027MW now installed, the government told the Energy Forum for Africa in Lusaka. At the same forum, Axian signed a power purchase agreement with Africa GreenCo for the 200MW Kudu plant, whose output will be sold across the Southern African Power Pool.

Zimbabwe is replacing unsolicited power project bids with competitive tendering, and the framework behind it is being built with World Bank technical assistance covering transaction advisers, model bidding documents and a pilot procurement of around 370MW across the Ministry, ZETDC and the regulator.

Zambia’s Energy Regulation Board was tracking 1,315MW of generation under construction in September, as ministries defended their 2027 spending plans in Lusaka this week. The medium-term plan behind that budget, published on 27 September, puts 10,000MW among its production targets, and comments on its Green Paper close on 9 October.

Sipho Phiri chairs Kwama Energy, which co-developed Ilute, the Zambian solar plant he calls Africa’s first non-recourse merchant power station. Speaking to ENN, he argues that generation is increasingly solved and that Southern Africa is already inside a transmission constraint, with lead times that leave very little room.

Mercuria and Exergy signed a $250 million financing agreement in Lusaka on 25 September, covering generation and transmission projects run by two Exergy subsidiaries. It is among the largest private commitments made to Zambia’s power sector and the commodities group’s first move into the region’s electricity market.

ZESA’s acting chief executive Cletus Nyachowe told Parliament in May that private developers had 635MW under construction and another 730MW closing, enough for 1,365MW of new capacity by December 2026 and an end to imports a year later. The national compact sets out what still has to be built.

Zimplats commissioned 35MW at Selous in August 2024 and has a 45MW second phase under construction at a cost of US$54 million. First Quantum’s Sentinel mine, Eureka’s gold mine, Sable Chemicals and Zambia Sugar appear alongside it on the Zimbabwe-Zambia programme as companies funding their own power.