Zimbabwe has $9bn plan to join African electricity drive

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Zimbabwe has $9bn plan to join African electricity drive

8:16 CAT | 06 Jun 2025

File photo: Bloomberg

Zimbabwe laid out plans to raise more than $9 billion to boost energy access at a conference in London on Wednesday, an event organized by multilateral lenders to promote a flagship African electrification program to private investors.

The plan, which falls under the World Bank and African Development Bank’s Mission 300 program, envisages a more than doubling of the country’s power production from hydro, wind, solar and biomass plants, a copy of the presentation sent to Bloomberg showed. Zimbabwe has been hit by regular power outages in recent years, often lasting most of the day, due to a lack of generation capacity.

Mission 300, which the banks unveiled at a conference in Tanzania in January, aims to bring electricity to 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030 at a cost of tens of billions of dollars sourced from development finance institutions and private investors. The region is home to about 83% of the 680 million people globally who don’t have access to electricity.

“Despite having abundant renewable energy potential, Zimbabwe continues to face critical energy challenges,” July Moyo, the country’s energy minister, wrote in the plan, titled Zimbabwe’s National Energy Compact. “As of 2024, 38% of the population lacks access to electricity.”

Zimbabwe’s ambitions of benefiting from the program are complicated by the fact that it has been in default to multilateral lenders — including the World Bank — for a quarter of a century. That means it can’t borrow money from them and the finance it needs will have to come largely from private investors.

Under the plan Zimbabwe plans to seek:

$3.81 billion for power generation, with 90% of that coming from private investment

$968 million for transmission, with 80% funded by the state

$147 million for distribution, 80% funded by the state

$2.97 billion for on-grid access, all funded by the government

$405 million for solar systems, 70% funded by private investors

$792 million for clean-cooking technologies, with 70% coming from the private sector

Ghana, Togo, Mozambique and Burundi are also scheduled to present their plans at the conference, which isn’t open to the media, on Wednesday. Eleven countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, disclosed their blueprints to boost electrification at the Tanzania conference.

Source: Bloomberg