Mozambique’s Temane Transmission Project gets the green light to begin construction

The project will deliver electricity from power plants at Temane in Inhambane Province to Maputo, the nation's capital, via a 563-kilometer transmission line. This Power Africa-supported project aims to increase the reliability of available energy and facilitate a sustainable and renewable electricity supply. The project reached its first funding milestone in June and July 2019, when all financiers, including Power Africa partners the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Norwegian Trust Fund, committed to their respective funding contributions. The financial agreements between project funders and Mozambique's national utility, Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), have several effectiveness conditions that must be met before the funds are released. The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) issued letters of effectiveness in December 2020, approving disbursement of their portion of debt funding. The USAID Southern Africa Energy Program (SAEP), a Power Africa initiative, provided support for the project's evolving organizational and technical needs through an embedded advisor within EDM from January 2018 to December 2020. The SAEP advisor guided and facilitated engagements between the funders and EDM to finalize the project financing plan and prepare the operational team to meet TTP's complex operational requirements. The TTP forms a key component of Mozambique's 2015-2024 National Energy Strategy, which aims to develop a transmission system to connect Mozambique's northern, central, and southern power grids and strengthen regional connectivity to the Southern African Power Pool. The project will facilitate a sustainable and renewable electricity supply, increase the reliability of available energy, and support EDM in its development of several distribution projects to increase connections, unlock the agricultural potential of rural areas, and create higher value industrial jobs. The project is expected to create close to 1,800 jobs during the three-year construction phase. In addition to increasing Mozambique's generation capacity and energizing its social and economic transformation, the TTP is also of great importance to the Southern African region. Increased access to affordable and reliable energy supply across Southern Africa requires greater cooperation across borders to ensure power can move freely and securely. With efficient transmission systems in place, greater volumes of electricity can be traded at reduced costs to governments and consumers. Construction of the 400 kV transmission line is expected to be completed by 2023.