Online Reporter
Rutendo Nyeve, Victoria Falls Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) is formally engaging private investors and developers to wire over 371 fully-built but un-electrified suburbs across the country, a move aimed at connecting power to hundreds of long-neglected communities.
The ambitious plan, which forms the core of six new strategic models, is designed to accelerate connections and clear a massive backlog that has left thousands of households and businesses in so-called “dark cities” without power for years.
ZETDC acting managing director, Engineer Abel Gurupira, revealed this while courting investors at the just ended Africa Capital Markets Forum held in South Africa where he laid bare the scale of the challenge and the utility’s innovative shift towards a public-private partnership model to overcome its financial and operational constraints.
“When our colleagues generate the power, what we then need to do as ZETDC is then to distribute that same power and get to the end users,” he said.
“I would say, they become the most important components of the whole matrix because if you don’t get them to pay, then the whole process is futile,” said Eng Gurupira.
Highlighting the technical chain from high-voltage transmission to the final 400-volt connections in homes, Eng Gurupira zeroed in on the national challenge of un-reticulated suburbs.
“What I just want to speak to is what we call dark cities within our country, which are many suburbs that are inclusive of commercial and industrial centres,” he said.
“In some cases, we have had cases where houses were constructed for many years and have had no supply of electricity.”
Faced with this reality, he said the utility was forced to think beyond its traditional role.
“So, we have looked at this and said, because of the incapacity of the utility to reticulate those suburbs, we came up with strategies of getting to reticulate those suburbs,” said Eng Gurupira.
“We have close to 371 suburbs that are un-reticulated, that don’t have electricity supply, but that are fully built,” he confirmed.
To tackle this, ZETDC has developed six distinct connection models.
The most significant departure from past practice is the active invitation of private capital and expertise.
“But what is of interest is that we have now opened space and said it’s not up to the utility only to reticulate those houses and commercial centres and industrial centres. So, we have opened the space for private players to come in,” Eng Gurupira said.
He said several of the six strategies were specifically designed to accommodate private players.
A key model involves licensing private companies as secondary distribution licensees.
“So, we have private companies that can then come in and manage distribution areas, then as secondary distribution licensees. Our regulator (Zera) will license them to do that,” he said.
“So, they will take up a whole server with bulk supply as the utility accessor. The private players can take up supply, reticulate the suburbs, build and then they will recover costs through even our billing system as Zesa,” he said.
The proposed model allows private entities to fund, build, and maintain the local distribution network, recouping their investment through the sale of electricity, potentially using the existing ZETDC billing platform to streamline the process,” said Eng Gurupira.
“Another model already being piloted successfully is the bank-financed community project.
“We have already piloted successfully with one of our banks and the bank is actually rolling over to about three more setups (suburbs) that are dotted throughout the country,” he said, indicating early positive results from this collaborative financing approach.
“A further strategy involves advanced net metering, which could allow communities with their own generation capacity, such as solar, to feed excess power back into the local grid managed by a private player.”
The new policy direction signals a major shift in the Government’s approach to national electrification.
By acknowledging the incapacity of the utility to shoulder the burden alone, the ZETDC is pragmatically leveraging private sector funding and efficiency to solve a decades-old problem.
For the residents of the 371 dark suburbs, this strategic pivot could finally mean the switch is about to be flipped on.
