Zambie
Africa GreenCo has signed a power purchase agreement with Axian Energy for the 200 MWac Kudu solar project in Zambia, the largest PPA the company has signed. The plant will not sell its output to ZESCO, the state utility. It will sell into the region instead.
A PPA that routes around the national utility
The agreement was signed on 8 October at the Energy Forum for Africa in Lusaka and covers around 530 GWh a year from a 200 MWac, 240 MWdc plant. Standard Bank and Stanbic Bank Zambia are supporting the push to financial close. Duration, tariff, site and commissioning date have not been disclosed. GreenCo’s earlier Zambian deals give the shape: a 13-year contract at the 100 MW Chisamba plant carried $71.5m of commercial debt from Stanbic, and the 32 MWp Ilute project reached financial close in January 2026 without a sovereign guarantee.
GreenCo buys the power, Axian owns the plant
Africa GreenCo does not develop projects. GreenCo Power Services buys from independent producers and resells to utilities, mines and commercial users, standing between the plant and the end customer as the creditworthy counterparty. It has traded around 4 TWh since 2021 across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa, with guarantee cover from GuarantCo and the EU’s EFSD+. Axian Energy is an independent power producer rather than a contractor for hire. The Madagascar-based group, led by Hassanein Hiridjee, develops, funds, builds and operates its own plants, over 300 MW across nine countries.
Its first Zambian asset, 85.6% of the 54.3 MWp Bangweulu plant bought in October 2025, sells to ZESCO on a 25-year contract. Kudu takes the other route.
SAPP is the market the electricity is sold into
The Southern African Power Pool was created in August 1995 under an agreement between SADC governments and now runs competitive regional trading. Its twelve members are Angola, Botswana, the DRC, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and the pool holds twenty-four entities. Membership is not restricted to national utilities: GreenCo is a SAPP member in its own right, which is what lets a plant in Zambia reach a buyer in another country. Zambia passed 1,027 MW of installed solar in October, out of 4,722 MW of total generating capacity.
What it means
For a developer pricing a Zambian project, Kudu shifts the question from whether ZESCO will sign to whether a trader can carry your volume. GreenCo now has around 325 MW of Zambian solar under contract, and what lenders underwrite is its guarantors rather than the Zambian treasury, which is why Ilute closed with no sovereign guarantee at all. The trade-off sits in the tenor. A trader has to resell your output into a market where it finds buyers continuously, so it prices that risk back into the contract: 13 years at Chisamba, against the twenty or more a utility PPA typically runs. Shorter tenor means more of your debt has to amortise inside the contract window, and the rest of the model rests on a merchant tail nobody can price yet. That is the real cost of not needing a sovereign guarantee.
Sources: Solarquarter, Zambia Monitor, PV Tech
