Sponsors

A US$292 million grant is funding the Zambian section of the line that joins the Southern African Power Pool to its East African counterpart. Work on the Tanzanian side was due to finish this year. Once live, Zambia can import in a dry year and export in a wet one.

Harare ended subsidised grid tariffs for the sector and required smelters to build their own generation, primarily renewable. Smelting draws 3,500 to 4,000 kilowatt hours a tonne. The requirement arrives alongside a raw mineral export ban that asks the same companies to process more, not less.

Harare requires exports of concentrate to stop on 1 January and has made written commitments on plant timelines a condition of trading until then. Two facilities are still under construction. Producers have asked for the date to move, and the answer will decide who is exporting in February.

Installed capacity now stands at 4,576MW, of which 841MW is solar, and Kariba's usable storage has roughly doubled in a year. Almost all of the additional units drawn last year went to the mines, and Open Access is now the mechanism deciding who is served first.

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.

David Arinze of the Energy Transition Challenge Fund, who also leads the Nigeria Economic Summit Group's Renewable Energy Thematic Working Group, on why the figure everyone quotes is misread, what a solar factory importing its own glass reveals about Nigerian manufacturing, and where catalytic capital stops working.

The grids are synchronised, all fourteen continental countries are connected and two national utilities have already moved into surplus by buying across a border. What has not been tested is whether a market with no new generation behind it can keep clearing. The West African Power Pool and the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority now […]

Abuja has issued licences on the condition that the holder builds domestic processing capacity. Four ministries convene in November alongside investors who will want to know how many of those conditions have been met, and what happens to a licence where they have not. Nigeria issues no mining licence without a plan for a local […]