The Southern African Power Pool ( SAPP) said on Tuesday that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will experience an upsurge in electricity demand in the next seven years against a background of an anticipated power shortage in 2007.

While all the 12 member countries of SAPP expect total demand to increase from 40,739 megawatts in 2005 to 51,799 megawatts in 2012, experts have warned of a shortage next year if nothing is done to increase the region's power generating capacity.

The anticipated shortage will adversely affect the region's potential to attract investment as well as hinder rural electrification progress in member states.

SAPP Executive Committee Chairman, Leake Hangala, said in the organization's annual report that the diminishing capacity was largely due to the increase in power demand.

"Much of the increase in power demand has been partially caused by increase in the population of most SADC member states, economic expansion in member states requiring more power to supply the new industries and non-economic tariffs in some cases that do not support re-investment in power generation," he said.

It was critical for the region to address issues concerning the regulation and implementation of the cost reflective tariffs in order to attract investment into generation and transmission projects in the region, he said.

Member states have since identified short and long-term electricity generation and transmission projects to address the decreasing power generation.

The identified short-term projects, expected to be commissioned between 2007 and 2010, have the potential to generate 11,564 megawatts while the long term projects to be commissioned between 2011 and 2020 have the capacity to generate at least 31,743 megawatts.

SAPP is made up of countries that include Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, SAPP and the government of Zimbabwe on Monday signed the host country agreement for the hosting of SAPP's Coordination Center in Harare.

Source: Xinhua