Privatisation
Following a series of abnadoned power generation porojects, power-starved industrialists in Zimbabwe are calling for the privatisation of the country’s state-owned electricity supplier to reduce costs and encourage investment. Attempts by the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) to boost reliabilityhave been thwarted by financial difficulties. Zesa is failing to honour contractual obligations over supplies and a lack of foreign cash is hampering attempts to fund the purchase of urgently needed spare parts for its imported generators and other plant.
Peak capacity of 1.8 GW lags demand by an estimated 25 per cent and Zesa is being forced to rely more and more on its neighbours to bolster supplies, with around 45 per cent of its electricity imported from South Africa’s Eskom. And, while electricity consumption has increased significantly since independence in 1980, lack of financial resources has resulted in the shelving of significant generation projects such as the Gokwe North power station, which could have provided a longer-term solution to the power crisis.
Yet another planned project, the Batoka Gorge power scheme, had also to be abandoned due to lack of commitment on behalf of the project’s partner, Zambia, which currently has an excess of supply.