Midrand - The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) participated and facilitated a SADC high-level Ministerial Resource Mobilisation Workshop and Energy Investment Forum held in Swaziland earlier this month.

The DBSA’s participation was in its capacity as fund manager and implementer of the Southern African Development Community Project Preparation Development Fund (SADC PPDF).

This high-level event was convened to operationalise the 36th Summit theme on “Resource Mobilisation for Investment in Sustainable Energy Infrastructure for an Inclusive SADC industrialisation and for the Prosperity of the Region”. The objectives of the workshop and forum were to foster practical and sustainable solutions that address the power deficit in the region and attract investment into the region’s energy infrastructure.

The DBSA presented the progress on key projects which the bank are preparing through the SADC PPDF such as the Angola – Namibia interconnector and the Botswana – South Africa interconnector.
During the forum, the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) reported that when Eskom recently commissioned about 3020 MW of Energy through their Medupi and Ingula generation projects, it created a surplus of approximately 1 GW of energy in the SADC region.

Mr. Mohan Vivekanandan, Group Executive for the DBSA, co-chaired a session on Regional Energy Projects: Progress and Investment opportunities. “Given the excess power capacity in South Africa, reliable transmission networks are still crucial to ensure affordable energy for all, especially when working towards the SADC region’s goal in integrating the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) to the Eastern African Power Pool” said Mr. Vivekanandan. He further noted that projects such as the Zimbabwe-Zambia-Botswana-Namibia (ZIZABONA) project and Batoka Hydro Electric Power Scheme, have been in the system for a very long time, new and different ways need to be considered to accelerate these projects to implementation through innovative funding and support mechanisms.