Zimbabwe is going to implement 18 power projects to address the issue of electricity shortage, Sydney Gata, state-owned energy company ZESA Holdings chairman, said at the ceremony of launching the construction of a 720MW thermal power plant on Monday.
"We have 18 projects that are starting and will give us 4 000MW. We are short of 600MW and so we will have massive surplus and we are already thinking of where to sell," Gata said, as quoted by local media.
The chairman of ZESA Holdings noted that his company got a lot of complaints from the Zimbabwean people because of recent nationwide blackout. Gata said that the projects, which he had mentioned before, are expected to solve power supply problems for a long time.
He added that his company works with African power producers like Pretoria Portland Cement, Zimbabwean ferrochrome company Zimasco, as long as with Chinese investors.
In late November, both Zambia and Zimbabwe suffered nationwide power outages, the national energy companies reported. The blackouts were reportedly caused by system disturbance in the interconnected power networks of two African countries. Later, local media noted that power generation at the Kariba Hydro Power Plant, which provides most of the electricity to Zimbabwe, was negatively influenced by the droughts.
In April, Zimbabwe declared drought a national disaster, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa saying the country needed $2 billion in aid to help millions of people who are facing hunger. In Southern Africa, Zimbabwe was the third country to declare drought a national disaster, after Malawi and Zambia.