The Southern African Power Pool and Southern African Development Community have announced a plan to build high-voltage transmission lines to link several countries across Southern Africa.
The two groups' Regional Transmission Infrastructure Financing Facility, which will begin with a $20 million commitment from the Power Pool, aims to raise $1.3 billion from "public and private sector investors locally and internationally." It is being managed by Climate Fund Managers, an environmentally focused finance fund manager.
In South Africa, Southern Africa's most industrialized nation, power is supplied by public utility company Eskom. The company is reportedly in debt and has scheduled daily blackouts that have disrupted economic activity. Eskom has been courting private investment, with Mteto Nyati, the chairman of its board of directors, saying that it needs "close to 350 billion rand [$18.6 billion] over the next 10 years to build the transmission infrastructure. We do not have, from our own operations, the capacity to fund that."
However, Nyati also promised that Eskom would not be fully privatized, saying, "Private sector participation, yes, but the asset is going to end up with the government."
In the short term, the Power Pool, a cooperative of 12 national electricity companies, will attempt to connect countries across the region, beginning with an Angola-Namibia interconnector that is estimated to cost $356 million.
According to Victor Mapani, chairperson of the Power Pool executive committee, the RTIFF will enable "the private sector to work alongside public sector utilities to roll out new transmission lines at scale."
There is the expectation that, with more investment in infrastructure, Africa could become a major generator of solar power. According to the International Energy Agency, the continent has 60% of the world's solar resources but only 1% of the world's solar generation capacity. But with investment from the RTIFF and work from several startups, that could soon change.
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