Africa GreenCo lands $10M from Sanlam — first private institutional investor
What's the deal? Africa GreenCo, a regional renewable energy trading platform, has secured a $10 million equity investment from Sanlam Alternative InvestmentsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The deal gives Sanlam a 10% stake in the company — marking the first time a private institutional investor has taken a shareholding in GreenCo.
GreenCo operates across Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, with licensing underway in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It combines renewable energy offtake agreements, power supply deals with mines and industrial users, regional electricity trading, and portfolio optimisation under one platform.
The company has traded more than 2 terawatt-hours of electricity and holds the largest purchase-side market share within the Southern African Power Pool's competitive markets.
Why now? Southern Africa faces chronic power shortages, and regional trading systems like the Southern African Power Pool and the emerging South African Wholesale Electricity Market are expected to play a growing role in integrating renewable energy across borders. GreenCo sits at the centre of that shift.
Sanlam Alternative Investments has deployed more than ZAR17 billion into 40 sustainable infrastructure projects across Africa to date. Backing GreenCo extends that strategy into market infrastructure — the plumbing that connects renewable supply with commercial demand.
"We built GreenCo on the belief that Africa should not wait for someone else to finance its energy transition," said co-founder and group chief financial officer Pug Bennet. "If the continent can provide its own creditworthy, commercially bankable market infrastructure, then institutional capital will follow."
What could go wrong? Regional electricity trading in Africa remains fragmented, with regulatory inconsistencies across jurisdictions and political risk in key markets like the DRC. Scaling a multi-country trading platform depends on licensing approvals and grid interconnections that don't always move quickly.
The signal: Africa GreenCo's breakout-stage status on Dealroom underscores how quickly a commercially driven energy trading platform can gain traction in a region starved for reliable power. Sanlam's entry on commercial equity terms — rather than the concessional development finance that has historically dominated African energy deals — suggests institutional investors increasingly see homegrown market infrastructure, not just generation assets, as a viable bet on the continent's energy transition.
Read more: southerneye.co.zw
