South African energy trader Enpower Trading has appointed energy sector veteran Enos Banda as chairperson, adding impetus to its plans to accelerate private investment into power generation and help unlock more than an estimated 5 GW of renewable energy over five years.

Banda served as early and transformative post-democracy National Energy Regulator of South Africa chairperson. In the early 2000s, he was also CEO of State-owned Eskom and responsible for the national electrification programme, as well as Eskom’s international independent power producer services, and its operations and maintenance provision in Libya, Nigeria, China, Uganda and the Southern African Development Community region.

He has advised multiple African governments on energy policy and regulation.

Banda’s experience in project finance, mergers and acquisitions and capital markets was honed during his time as a lawyer at White & Case in New York and Johannesburg, and Africa head of Credit Suisse and HSBC. He has served as chairperson and board member of several companies listed on the NYSE, LSE and the JSE, the largest of which had a market capitalisation of more than $45-billion.

Banda is also a member of the New York law bar, and an advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa. His extensive experience is underpinned by an Honours in finance, Master of Law in international sovereign and commercial law, and Doctor of Jurisprudence in commercial law, Enpower Trading says.

“Enpower is uniquely positioned to seize the opportunities for energy trading which are being created by South Africa’s transition to a more open and competitive energy sector. I am delighted to join Enpower Trading and be part of its mission to accelerate and deepen the delivery of cleaner and greener energy to customers,” says Banda.

Energy trading will serve as a critical interface between independent power producers (IPPs) and customers, enabling the buying and selling of primarily renewable energy at lower prices than Eskom. It will also unlock investment into IPPs by collaborating with the development finance community and private sector to guarantee offtake for IPPs.

Further, Enpower recently closed a further investment round in which funding was secured from highly experienced traders in the global gas and power, and Africa markets.

“Our investors are strongly aligned with our mission to leverage the power of energy trading to bring increased generation capacity, lower prices and clean energy to the South African market. “We are pleased to have received the financial backing to begin moving forward fast with this agenda,” says Enpower CEO James Beatty.

Banda joins other highly experienced members of the Enpower board, including Beatty, who has over 16 years of experience at top-tier banks and commodity trading houses, including Trafigura Group and Glencore; Enpower director Burak Tutar, who has over 16 years of experience in the US, Turkey and Japan; Nikolai Germann, an energy trader with over 25 years of experience in the sub-Saharan African energy sector; and Charl Alheit, a specialist in raising both debt and equity financing for distributed renewable energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa.