Global firms vie with China in Zimbabwe energy

Zimbabwe has been locked out of international capital markets since 1999, after it defaulted on loans from lenders including the World Bank, the Paris Club and the African Development Bank.

The US and other Western nations are considering investing in Zimbabwe's energy industry, long-dominated by Chinese investors, Energy and Power Development Minister July Moyo said.

The American interest adds to Middle Eastern and Russian investors who are already present in the southern African nation, Moyo told Bloomberg's Jennifer Zabasajja on the sidelines of the African Energy Week conference in Cape Town on Tuesday.

"Some of the Western countries, including America, are now talking about: ‘Hey, you have coal, you have gas,'" he said. "We have plenty in Zimbabwe."

Zimbabwe has been locked out of international capital markets since 1999, after it defaulted on loans from lenders including the World Bank, the Paris Club and the African Development Bank. That restricts access to cheaper financing, making it difficult for the country to attract investors and get projects off the ground.

Zimbabwe generates 56% of its electricity from coal at a plant located in the western town of Hwange. The facility has an installed capacity of 1,500 megawatts, after the addition of 600 megawatts by China's Sinohydro in 2023. The country also generates 750 megawatts from Kariba Hydro Power, which was built by Sinohydro, adding 300 megawatts in 2025.

Zimbabwean officials last week attended a meeting in Washington DC addressed by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

"We didn't talk to him face to face, but we were very buoyant by the fact that the present administration accepts that coal and gas are necessary, while we look for renewable energy as a transition," he said. "We have investors who want to look at coal bed methane gas," the minister said, without providing further details.

The authorities in June unveiled a plan to raise more than $9 billion to boost energy access in a country hit by regular power outages - often lasting most of the day- because of a lack of generation capacity. The plan, which falls under the World Bank and African Development Bank's Mission 300 program, envisages a more than doubling of power output from hydro, wind, solar and biomass plants.