Zambia: South Africa’s Eskom to export electricity to Zambia from October

Zambia’s state power utility Zesco Ltd said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement to import 300 MW of electricity from South Africa’s Eskom for a period of six months to ease shortages, its acting managing director said. Africa’s second largest copper producer, Zambia has a power deficit of more than 750 MW because of low water levels at hydropower dams and last week announced it would increase the hours for power rationing as water levels continued to fall.

Acting Managing Director Webster Musonda told reporters that imports from Eskom would start on October 1 and would cost USD 22 million a month. “The negotiations have been concluded and we have an offer on the table. We will spread the cost of importing this power to our customers,” said Musonda.

Zambia has historically priced electricity below the cost of production through subsidies. Only in recent years has the country started to gradually raise prices. In 2017, the country’s energy regulator approved a 75% price hike for electricity retail consumers and introduced a flat 9.30 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour tariff for mining companies.


SOURCE: Reuters

More News

Ethiopia: Hurdle cleared for M-Pesa inclusion in telco licence

Ethiopia has cleared the way for Safaricom to introduce M-Pesa in the market of 110 million people after deciding to include the ...

East Africa: Egyptian lender CIB reaches for a bigger piece of region’s banking sector

Egyptian largest private sector bank by assets Commercial International Bank (CIB) is seeking to acquire more banks to strengthen ...

Africa: Off-grid solar access solutions for continent identified

The European Investment Bank and International Solar Alliance have published a study outlining access solutions to overcome key ...

Kenya | country tops world in growth in new electricity connections

Kenya has been ranked the top country in the world in reducing population with no access to electricity, pointing to the impact ...