The Senior Manager for Grid Expansion and Energy Systems at the Energy Council of South Africa, Keith Katyora, has said that Africa cannot achieve its clean energy transition without first expanding its power grids.

Speaking at the Africa Sustainable Energy Centre’s (ASEC) event during World Energy Week 2025, he explained that countries cannot transition to clean energy without adequate transmission.

Using South Africa as a case study, Mr Katyora said that “to be able to implement or allow any type of development that we deem necessary, especially from an economic and GDP perspective, we need about 14,200 kilometres of new transmission between now and 2035. We currently have about 70 gigawatts of renewable projects that are in the pipeline.”

He explained that without adequate transmission capacity, many of them cannot be connected to the grid.

He added that although renewable energy is getting cheaper, the future without adequate transmission is uncertain, and this could affect the power supply or its quality.

“…Even in Southern Africa, they tell you energy transition is all good. However, we don't know what's going to happen, especially in terms of curtailment and the system quality long term. And that obviously ultimately affects things like your power quality and also your reliability and security of supply."

This, Mr Katyora, said inspired a review of how energy infrastructure is financed and developed following interest from private companies, especially those who want to upscale data centres not just for conglomerates but also the banking sector.

He noted that his outfit has been exploring private transmission with a self-built shared model, which empowers private developers to construct their own transmission infrastructure, with utilities compensating them through structured agreements.

However, to make this model sustainable, they must protect every party involved, Mr Katyora stated, adding that the Energy Council is creating a framework that ring-fences risk and safeguards investment.

“In our preliminary assessment of the opportunity that even sits within that space, we are estimating that to be about 22 billion Rands that can be unlocked from the private sector, which is driven by this huge demand that we're seeing. And this is all going to come from the private sector, not the government.”

Mr Katyora noted that beyond South Africa, this model can be adopted across the continent. 

“We know that in regions like Zambia, where there's discussions right now about the Lobito corridor, the Lobito corridor can't happen without energy. It needs energy. We know about the huge mining activities that are going to be happening in Mozambique.”

“We also know that more than a year ago, there were drought issues in Zambia and Zimbabwe, which saw quite a lot of the countries go into blackout. So there is a need for a new generation, but to be able to then unlock that, the government needs to be able to now look into models where the private sector is able to pitch in and come in and take a percentage of that development.”

Mr Katyora urged policymakers and financiers to expand power lines first in their bid to unlock Africa’s full renewable potential.