Pinda upbeat on power supply in SADC...

Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda is optimistic that lighting the 1,247,000 square kilometer Southern African Development Community (SADC) region is possible, if only there is favourable investment climate.

In his opening speech at the fifth annual conference of the SADC Regional Electricity Regulators Association (RERA) here yesterday, Pinda said smart partnership was crucial for achieving the goal.

``Sustainable power supply is possible given a good investment climate that allows for a smart partnership between governments, power utilities as well as the private sector in the development and implementation of generation, transmission and distribution programs and projects,`` he said.

The Premier said that with the investment atmosphere supported by co-operation among countries in various regional settings, it was possible to develop effective regional power projects.

If developed, he said, the projects would pave way to creation of large scale programmes, bigger markets, thus making the plan to light the region economically viable.

``Not many countries can have enough financial resources to develop large scale projects alone. Whereas a large scale project may enjoy economies of scale, a country may be faced with the problem of lack of market, if it develops in isolation,`` Pinda said.

He said Africa experienced power shortages mainly due to lack of timely investment, drought and overdependence on hydropower.

``We need to develop the energy resources in the continent such as hydropower, coal, natural gas and other indigenous sources`` PM explained.

Other measures are to implement interconnectivity pools among group of countries as well as creating regional interconnection between region pools.

The current status of power supply within the SADC region, which has installed capacity of 54,742 MW of which only 46,391 MW is available. However the peak demand is about 44,000 MW.

Available records show that although a new generation project amounting to 1,810 MW was commissioned in the region last year, with the reserve margin still deficit against a required reserve margin of 10 percent.

The PM said if the Inga III Project, with capacity to generate over 4,000 MW in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would be jointly developed, it would help a great deal in supporting most of the stunting economies due to lack of power.

Angola, Botswana, Namibia, the DRC and South Africa formed Westcor, as a joint venture company, which seeks to exploit the potential in hydropower offered by the Inga River.

``The Grand Inga scheme with capacity of 39,000MW, but if also jointly developed, could serve the big part south of the Sahara Region, northern Africa and even feed surplus power into Southern Europe,`` Pinda said.

SOURCE: GUARDIAN, November 13, 2008