Sanlam Alternative Investments, the alternative investments business within Sanlam, has become the first private institutional shareholder in renewable energy trader and buyer Africa GreenCo (GreenCo) through the investment of $10-million for a 10% shareholding.

GreenCo states that Africa's energy transition will scale only when the continent has its own creditworthy, commercially bankable market infrastructure. The investment in GreenCo by Sanlam Alternative Investments is expected to help GreenCo further scale its operations.

The energy trader has already traded more than 2 TWh of electricity to date and says it holds the highest purchase-side market share across the Southern African Power Pool’s (SAPP's) competitive markets. 

“We built GreenCo on the belief that Africa should not wait for someone else to finance its energy transition; if the continent can provide its own creditworthy, commercially bankable market infrastructure, then institutional capital will follow. Sanlam Alternative Investments has been one of the most consistent allocators of capital into African sustainable infrastructure for more than a decade, and their aim to be Africa’s premier sustainable and impact investor maps directly onto the role GreenCo plays in Southern Africa’s power markets.

"This round positions GreenCo to further scale and to keep delivering the bankable offtake that finances new generation and the reliable, increasingly low-carbon power that commercial and large industrial users across the region depend on,” says GreenCo co-founder and CFO Pug Bennet.

“GreenCo occupies the part of the energy value chain that determines whether new power generation is actually delivered. For Sanlam Alternative Investments, this investment is a natural extension of more than a decade of infrastructure investment across the continent: backing the market architecture that allows Africa to finance its own energy transition on commercial terms, while supporting the reliable, increasingly low-carbon power that economic growth depends on,” adds Sanlam Alternative Investments infrastructure finance executive head Mark Moorhouse.

GreenCo has a team of more than 80 professionals operating across Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, with licensing under way in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The energy trader integrates four capabilities into a single customer-led proposition: bankable long-term offtake with renewable independent power producers (IPPs); power sale agreements with mines, commercial and industrial customers and with utilities; continuous regional trading across the SAPP and, in the near future, the emerging South African Wholesale Electricity Market; and active portfolio optimisation.

This combination of capabilities delivers what each side needs: for IPPs and their lenders, a creditworthy counterparty without single-buyer exposure; for commercial and industrial consumers, reliable, lower-carbon power that absorbs market complexity on their behalf; and, for utilities, a partner that strengthens system outcomes through wheeling, settlement and the regional market itself.

Sanlam Alternative Investments’ equity stake in GreenCo complements that portfolio by adding direct exposure to the integrated offtake-and-trading layer of the Southern African renewables market – the layer that determines whether new generation reaches financial close and whether private power can be moved efficiently across countries and the region.