President Emmerson Mnangagwa revealed that he held talks with his Mozambican counterpart, Felipe Nyusi for that country to assist Zimbabwe in meeting its power needs.
President Mnangagwa said that the deal with Mozambique whereby the country’s power utility will supply Zimbabwe will additional power will be consummated soon. He said:
With regard to the issue of electricity, barring the issue of climate change, things were on course. We had seen the need for generating more electricity; this is why we have those various projects I have mentioned.
There are smaller ones which I have not mentioned, but that was the issue: to make sure that we have adequate energy generation, but since I have been here, I have discussed with my counterpart, the President of Mozambique (Filipe Nyusi), to look at Cahora Bassa assisting us.
Yes, we are weak on the financial side, but it is possible for us to strike a relationship where we can access the amount of power we need, the deficit we need to cover from Cahora Bassa and I think that is going to be consummated very soon so that we go back on course, but also we continue to implement our own projects in regard to that.
President Mnangagwa also revealed that a consortium of General Electric and China Power was awarded the tender to the Batoka Gorge project which is expected to cost US$4 billion and generate 2 400MW of power.
The project will be carried out on the Zambezi River below the Victoria Falls and upstream of the Lake Kariba and will be jointly shared by Zimbabwe and Zambia.