Africa GreenCo (GreenCo) has urged Southern African governments to harmonise cross-border electricity trading regulations, saying inconsistent rules are slowing regional power trade and discouraging investment in new electricity generation projects.
Speaking at the Zimbabwe Energy Conference, GreenCo Zimbabwe managing director Lion Mashiri said electricity trading had become critical to addressing power shortages across the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), where countries increasingly rely on imports and exports to balance electricity supply and demand.
Mashiri said GreenCo, an independent electricity trader operating in Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, with licensing underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo, plans to expand its regional footprint to facilitate electricity flows from surplus markets to deficit ones.
"Our role is to incentivise investment in strategic generation projects across the region by creating viable markets for electricity," he said.
Unlike vertically integrated utilities that maintain reserve generation capacity, GreenCo depends entirely on electricity markets to balance supply and demand, purchasing electricity when short and selling surplus power when available.
"We largely depend on a liquid market. It is in our interest to have a liquid market because investors also want to see deep and competitive electricity markets that give them confidence," Mashiri said.
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He said the competitive market operated by the Southern African Power Pool had earned a strong reputation for prompt payments, making it an attractive platform for financing new energy projects.
"The payment history of the competitive market is excellent. I am not aware of any default, and that is a strong signal we want to leverage as Zimbabwe to ensure more projects become bankable," he said.
However, Mashiri said fragmented regulatory frameworks remained one of the biggest barriers to expanding regional electricity trade.
He said third-party access rules, which govern how independent traders transmit electricity across national grids, differ significantly across countries, creating delays and uncertainty.
"In one country you may need approval from the minister, in another only the regulator, elsewhere only the system operator or your licence. Those differences create unnecessary obstacles to the free flow of electricity," he said.
Mashiri called on Sadc governments to align third-party access regulations, arguing that greater regulatory certainty would improve market liquidity, boost investor confidence and accelerate investment in new generation capacity needed to ease Southern Africa's persistent power shortages.