Zambia and Zimbabwe have each committed US$220 million to restarting the long-delayed $4.2 billion Batoka Gorge Hydropower Station near Victoria Falls, a project aimed at strengthening energy security across Southern Africa.
The project comes as the region accelerates efforts to link Southern and East Africa through new cross-border transmission lines, laying the foundation for one of the continent’s largest integrated power markets.
A bi-national committee has been formed to mobilise additional funding, while engineering and environmental studies are underway, according to Jito Kayumba, the finance and investment adviser to Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema.
Technical, legal and financial consultants have already been appointed to steer the project with a potential of 2 400 megawatts. Geography and colonial legacy have tied Zambia and Zimbabwe to shared energy infrastructure. The Federal Power Board and the Central African Power Company (Capco) oversaw power supply to the two colonies during the decade-long Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
Capco was disbanded in May 1987 and replaced by the Zambezi River Authority, which manages the Kariba Dam that the two countries share, providing them with 1600 MW of power.
Zambia and Zimbabwe both belong to the 12-member Southern Africa Power Pool (Sapp), created by the Southern African Development Community at its August 1995 summit in Kempton Park, South Africa.
Headquartered in Harare, the Sapp coordinates planning, operation and sharing of electric power systems among member states.
Alongside the Batoka project, the Zambia-Tanzania-Kenya Interconnector set to commence construction this year, is earmarked to feed into the Sapp and link to the East African Power Pool, creating one of Africa’s largest power markets, says the regional economic bloc, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, which is supporting the project.
The interconnector is funded by the African Development Bank, World Bank and the European Union.
“The increasing number of joint power projects between countries is a real example of regional economic cooperation and we should see this in other sectors of the economy,” economist Gloria Mwila said.
While recent droughts have delivered tough lessons on the risks of overreliance on hydropower, countries have not abandoned it entirely.