Zimbabwe and Zambia plan to re-tender aborted US$5 billion hydro dam project

Zimbabwe and its neighbour Zambia are reportedly restarting a project to build a US$5 billion hydropower plant on the Zambezi River.

The project, called Batoka Gorge, was originally awarded to General Electric and Power Construction of China, but those contracts were cancelled due to irregularities in the procurement process.

According to NewZwire and Bloomberg, the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), a joint venture between Zambia and Zimbabwe that oversees the Kariba Dam complex, will manage the re-tendering process.

Bids are expected to be received by April 2025 with a goal of selecting a new developer by September of that year.

Work on the 2,400-megawatt Batoka Gorge project was initially scheduled to begin in 2020 but has been delayed by several factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic and trouble securing funding.

The project is also seen as important for mitigating the effects of drought in the region. Drought, blamed on El Niño, has caused water levels at Kariba Dam to recede, prompting Zambia to declare a national disaster.

“Additional hydroelectric schemes will facilitate reservoir regulation for power generation and flood management,” said ZRA Chief Executive Officer Munyaradzi Munodawafa.

“This means generation will be increased at Batoka during the peak season while water will be banked at the Kariba Dam for use during the dry season.”

While low water levels are a concern, ZRA does not expect Kariba Dam to be decommissioned. The dam currently supplies 214MW of power to each country.

Batoka Gorge is expected to help alleviate some of the water flow problems at Kariba and also directly contribute “a significant increase to the desperately needed power supply capacity of Zambia and Zimbabwe,” Munodawafa said.

However, Zambia’s power utility, Zesco, has recently expressed some reservations about the project. Zesco’s managing director, Victor Mapani, said the company is looking at alternative hydropower sources in the northern part of the country, where there is more water.

“The alternative is to diversify from hydro into other avenues,” Mapani said.

“For example, there’s a plan to put up the Batoka on the Zambezi. Even if you put up a plant there, if there’s no water, it will be a white elephant. Our idea is to move hydropower generation from the southern part of the country to the north, where the waters are better placed.”