At a press conference at the fifteenth session of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Assembly in Abu Dhabi, Safiatou Alouma, IRENA Director General on Energy Transition, Climate and Green Industrialisation said that South Africa is a role model for successful African renewable projects.

“You need high level political leadership to trigger action on the ground and South Africa’s renewable energy programme shows what can be done and is a role model for other African countries,” she said.

South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) was launched at the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference or the Conference of the Parties 17 (COP17) and was aimed at increasing electricity supply capacity through private sector investment in renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaic plants, concentrated solar and onshore wind power. The aim was to add 30 Gigawatts (GW) to the grid before 2030 so that coal-fired power stations could be retired as they had exceeded their economic life span.

Since then there have been seven bid windows and each time the cost of power has been reduced as the technology has evolved.

In the latest awards announced on December 23, 2024, the prices range from R420.74 per Megawatt-hour (MWh) to R492.20 per MWh. This is substantially lower than the average rate of R2 029/MWh Eskom paid for power from renewable Independent Power Producers in the financial year ended March 2024.

She also mentioned that Djibouti and Mozambique had joined the Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Africa (APRA) at the Conference of the Parties 29 (COP29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2024, but as yet the national action plans had not been discussed so the APRA target of increasing Africa’s renewable energy capacity from 56 GW in 2022 to at least 300 GW by 2030 had not been incorporated.

The original APRA members were Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.

In response to a question from Business Report, she said that APRA was not an exclusive club, so if Zimbabwe and Zambia, which is not an APRA member, wanted to jointly develop the Batoka Gorge dam on the Zambezi river, then APRA would be ready to help with finance and technical advice.

The Batoka Gorge power station will be located on the Zambezi River, some 54 kilometres downstream of Victoria Falls, with two power plants, each with an installed capacity of 1 200 Megawatts (MW); one on the Zambian side and another on the Zimbabwean side, similar to the arrangement at Kariba, which was built in the 1950s.

APRA has three pillars that help with developing renewables in Africa. The first is the mobilisation of finance, the second is the engagement with the private sector and the third is the development of skills.

“APRA is an African led initiative so the national action plans are generated by each country and not imposed by IRENA or any other organisation. What we do is an advocacy role and highlight possibilities such as South Africa’s REIPPPP and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) green corridor initiative that seeks to create a continental transmission mechanism so that African countries can trade renewable energy that cuts the cost to the consumer, while at the same time improving a country’s resilience to climate change,” she said.

BUSINESS REPORT