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South Africa currently supplies electricity to eight Southern African countries, generating R18.8 billion in the 2025/26 financial year.

This is according to Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.

Ramokgopa was responding to a written question from uMkhonto weSizwe Party MP Moses Mbatha in Parliament.

The eight nations that receive power from South Africa are Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and they have been doing so for 30 years.

So how has this been possible if South Africa has been battling its own energy security challenges for the past two decades?

On 28 August 1995, the Southern African Power Pool, the first of its kind on the continent, was founded by the Southern African Development Community, a grouping of countries in the region.

This saw the energy utilities of 12 nations, comprising all the countries South Africa currently supplies with electricity, in addition to Angola, Malawi, and Tanzania, and South Africa itself, sign a memorandum of understanding to share the costs and benefits of power system interconnections.

Another two agreements were signed between the countries to codify operating rules, pricing structures, procedures, and guidelines.

The agreements aimed to leverage surplus electricity generation, mostly realised through hydroelectric production in other Southern African countries and coal-fired generation in South Africa.

According to Eskom’s 2025 annual report, covering the 2024/25 financial year, the power utility sold 14 532GWh and purchased 7 570GWh, resulting in net sales of 6 962GWh.

Sales increased by 40% year-on-year due to increased emergency support required by neighbouring countries. On the other hand, purchases declined by 17%, attributed to lower output from the Cahora Bassa hydropower plant in Mozambique.

Only a fraction of energy trading in the pool happens through competitive bidding, where countries with surplus generation can bid capacity into a regional market that can then be accessed by countries with deficits. This comprised only 7% of all trades within the pool as of January 2025.

Most trading happens through bilateral agreements between countries, allowing for long-term supply and demand balancing.

However, this requires emergency provisions within the agreements that allow sales to be suspended during an energy crisis, such as South Africa’s load-shedding.

For instance, if Eskom declares a supply shortage, it can suspend sales to Namibia and Botswana and cut supply to other countries by 10%.

Of the countries in the pool, South Africa is by far the largest electricity producer, with a generation capacity of around 63.4 gigawatts (GW). To put this into perspective, the second-largest is Angola at 7.6GW.

On the other end of the spectrum are countries such as Eswatini and Lesotho, with generation capacities of 0.29GW and 0.08GW, respectively.

According to Eskom, it has concluded or extended firm power supply agreements, where a seller guarantees a specific amount of electricity to a buyer, with Botswana, Namibia, and Zambia.

“These agreements are expected to become increasingly common as the generation mix evolves,” Eskom’s 2025 report noted.