Keeping the Lights On: Reshaping Renewable Energy Across Southern Africa

By the end of 2023, Zambia’s dams were running dangerously low.

At Lake Kariba — one of the country’s largest sources of electricity — the falling waterline meant turbines slowing, power cuts spreading, and an uncomfortable question looming over the economy:

What happens when a nation running on hydropower runs out of water?

For Zambia, where more than 80 percent of electricity is generated from hydropower, the drought quickly became a national energy crisis. Mines slowed operations. Farmers worried about irrigation. Households braced for long hours of load shedding.

But as the crisis deepened, Africa GreenCo (GreenCo) stepped in to help mobilize electricity from across Southern Africa, keeping industries running and stabilizing the grid.

“When the drought hit and reservoirs started falling, we could see very quickly that Zambia was heading toward a serious generation shortfall,” says Wezi Gondwe, the Managing Director at GreenCo Zambia.

Today, GreenCo’s trading model is helping bring reliable electricity to communities across Southern Africa — operating as a key intermediary in regional markets that have long struggled to attract private investment in renewable energy. But the idea behind it began years earlier, with a simple question: how do you unlock clean energy access in markets where governments cannot guarantee every power project?

Backed by The Rockefeller Foundation From the Start

In 2015, the concept for GreenCo was little more than an early-stage idea: a new approach to developing power markets in Africa with the goal of bringing reliable, clean electricity to communities that had long gone without.

The idea was straightforward but ambitious: establish a public-private partnership with a creditworthy intermediary that could buy electricity from renewable power producers and sell it onward to utilities and regional power markets. By absorbing some of the financial risk that developers face, the model could attract private investment into energy projects in countries where that investment had historically been scarce.

The Rockefeller Foundation supported the development of that model through two successive grants. The first financed a feasibility assessment to test whether the partnership structure could work in Southern Africa — findings that were later shared with energy experts, investors, and policymakers at the Bellagio Center, helping refine the concept and build early momentum.

A second grant then supported the development of a full business plan, laying the groundwork for the entity to be formally established. As the model moved from proposal to operational reality, the structure evolved — transitioning from a public-private partnership into a private entity, always with the same underlying goal: channeling private investment toward communities with the greatest need for affordable, reliable electricity.

“Their early support helped us turn that idea into what is now an operating energy trading model,” says Ana Hajduka, founder and Group CEO of Africa GreenCo.

Bridging the Investment Gap

At its core, the model exists to solve a problem with direct consequences for millions of people: in much of Southern Africa, lack of private investment in energy means communities go without reliable electricity.

GreenCo was established to help fill that gap.

“In many countries, there simply isn’t a buyer strong enough to take all required new renewable energy onto their balance sheet. Our role at Africa GreenCo is to step in as that buyer, giving lenders the confidence that projects will be paid and allowing new power to come onto the grid,” says Hajduka.

This model addresses a critical barrier that has long kept renewable energy out of reach in many emerging markets: payment risk. Without a reliable, creditworthy buyer, lenders won’t finance projects. And without financing, communities that need power and left waiting.

“Many power projects relied on sovereign guarantees to secure financing. But you eventually reach a limit to how many guarantees a government can provide. We needed another way to make projects bankable,” says Gondwe.

By acting as that intermediary, GreenCo spreads the risk, attracts private capital, and helps deliver clean energy to those that need it most.

When Zambia’s Drought Became a Power Crisis

By early 2024, the drought had sharply reduced hydropower generation across Zambia. Reservoirs that normally filled during the rainy season remained dangerously low, and the households, farms, and businesses across the country were feeling the impacts

Working with Zambia’s national utility, GreenCo mobilized emergency electricity imports from across the Southern African Power Pool, securing power from neighboring countries and channeling it into the national grid.

GreenCo and ZESCO sign an Electricity Supply Agreement in 2024 (Photo courtesy of GreenCo)

“We needed to move quickly,” says Gondwe. “Raising $55 million through multiple consumers would have been slow and complex, so we created a special purpose vehicle and raised the financing ourselves to secure the emergency power imports.”

At the peak of the crisis, those imports helped cover roughly 20 percent of Zambia’s national electricity demand, easing pressure on the grid.

The response demonstrated how regional cooperation and innovative finance can help vulnerable populations weather climate shocks that would otherwise leave them without power.

Building Resilience for the Future

While emergency imports helped stabilize Zambia’s electricity supply, the drought also highlighted a deeper challenge: the country’s heavy reliance on hydropower.

Diversifying the energy mix, particularly through solar and other renewables, is now a national priority.

GreenCo is playing an increasingly important role in that transition.

In 2025, Zambia reached financial close on the Chisamba Solar PV project, a large-scale grid-connected solar development supported by commercial financing and a long-term power purchase agreement with GreenCo.

“It’s the combination of operational trading expertise and financial strength that gives lenders comfort, and that’s what allows much-needed renewable generation to move forward,” Hajduka explains. 

Already operational, the plant is injecting new clean electricity into Zambia’s national grid, reducing reliance on hydropower while helping close the country’s electricity supply gap.

The project also demonstrates a new financing model: large-scale renewable infrastructure developed with private capital and without sovereign guarantees.

From Concept to Catalyst

What began as a three-page concept is now helping reshape energy markets across Southern Africa.

GreenCo now operates across five countries — Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — working toward the goal that has driven the model from the start: bringing reliable, affordable clean energy to the communities across Southern Africa.

Perhaps most importantly, the model has shown how new market structures can help countries respond to climate shocks while accelerating the energy transition.

For Zambia, the drought was a stark reminder that energy security depends not only on new power plants — but also on new ways of financing, trading, and managing electricity.

Nearly a decade after the idea was first presented at Bellagio, the GreenCo model is proving that those solutions are not only possible, but that they are already helping keep the lights on.

What started as a vision is now a working system delivering power into the Zambian grid and helping relieve the load-shedding that people here experience every day.
Ana Hajduka
Founder and Group CEO of Africa GreenCo