AFRICA GreenCo Group Limited (GreenCo) says Sanlam Alternative Investments has become its first private institutional shareholder after investing US$10 million for a 10% stake in the regional energy trader.
The investment marks a significant milestone for GreenCo, which believes the deal validates its model of building commercially bankable market infrastructure to support Africa’s energy transition.
GreenCo co-founder and group chief finance officer Pug Bennet said the company was founded on the principle that Africa should finance its own energy transition.
“If the continent can provide its own creditworthy, commercially bankable market infrastructure then institutional capital will follow,” Bennet said in a statement.
“Sanlam Alternative Investments has been one of the most consistent allocators of capital into African sustainable infrastructure for more than a decade, and their aim to be Africa’s premier sustainable and impact investor maps directly onto the role GreenCo plays in Southern Africa’s power markets.
“This round positions GreenCo to further scale and to keep delivering the bankable offtake that finances new generation and the reliable, increasingly low-carbon power that commercial and large industrial users across the region depend on.”
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Sanlam Alternative Investments executive head of infrastructure finance Mark Moorhouse said GreenCo played a pivotal role in ensuring that new electricity generation projects reached the market.
“GreenCo occupies the part of the energy value chain that determines whether new power generation is actually delivered,” Moorhouse said.
“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.”
Over the past decade, Sanlam has deployed more than R17 billion into 40 sustainable infrastructure projects across Africa through managed funds, including its Sustainable Infrastructure Fund.
GreenCo said the investment would support the expansion of its trading operations across Southern Africa.
The company has traded more than two terawatt-hours of electricity to date and currently holds the largest purchase-side market share across the Southern African Power Pool’s competitive markets.
GreenCo also said it has significant renewable energy generation capacity already in commercial operation. Its team of more than 80 professionals operates across Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, while licensing processes are underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo.