Africa GreenCo (GreenCo) has secured a US$10 million equity investment from Sanlam Alternative Investments, marking the first time a private institutional investor has taken a stake in the regional renewable energy trading platform.
The deal gives Sanlam Alternative Investments a 10% shareholding in GreenCo, strengthening the company’s position as a key player in Southern Africa’s fast-evolving electricity market.
The investment is significant not only for GreenCo but also for Africa’s wider energy transition agenda, as it signals growing institutional confidence in commercially driven, African-led energy market infrastructure.
GreenCo said the funding would help expand its electricity trading operations across the region, where it has already traded more than 2 terawatt-hours of electricity and built the largest purchase-side market share within the Southern African Power Pool competitive markets.
The company currently operates in Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, while licensing processes are underway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Unlike traditional market players, GreenCo combines four functions under one platform: renewable energy offtake agreements with independent power producers, power supply deals with mines and industrial users, regional electricity trading, and portfolio optimisation.
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The model is designed to reduce risk for renewable energy developers while helping businesses and utilities secure reliable, lower-carbon electricity supplies.
GreenCo co-founder and group chief financial officer Pug Bennet said the transaction demonstrated rising belief in Africa’s ability to finance its own energy transition.
“We built GreenCo on the belief that Africa should not wait for someone else to finance its energy transition; if the continent can provide its own creditworthy, commercially bankable market infrastructure, then institutional capital will follow,” Bennet said.
Sanlam Alternative Investments executive head of infrastructure finance Mark Moorhouse described GreenCo as occupying a critical position in the continent’s energy value chain.
“For Sanlam Alternative Investments, this investment is a natural extension of more than a decade of infrastructure investment across the continent: backing the market architecture that allows Africa to finance its own energy transition on commercial terms, while supporting the reliable, increasingly low-carbon power that economic growth depends on,” Moorhouse said.
Over the past decade, Sanlam Alternative Investments has deployed more than ZAR17 billion into 40 sustainable infrastructure projects across Africa through various managed funds.
GreenCo has gained increasing international recognition, including being named among TIME’s top GreenTech companies in 2025 and receiving multiple IJGlobal awards linked to energy transition financing and market innovation.
The investment also reflects increasing momentum behind regional electricity trading systems such as the Southern African Power Pool and the emerging South African Wholesale Electricity Market, which are expected to play a bigger role in integrating renewable energy across borders.