ELECTRICITY IS a common challenge. Whether one is in Johannesburg or a suburb in Gaborone, Harare, Windhoek, or any other city in southern Africa, one thing is almost certain to happen – a power cut.

 The SADC region has been facing challenges in meeting energy requirements for more than a decade due to growth in demand, forcing most countries to implement Demand Side Management (DSM) programmes such as load shedding.

While load shedding has succeeded in restraining the overall electricity demand in the region to some extent, the measure has also affected socio-economic growth since the availability of energy is one of the key enablers of sustainable development, and is essential to the industrialization agenda.

So the question is, what is SADC doing to address this common challenge and ensure that the region has enough energy to power its development?

“We have put in place a variety of measures to address the energy situation in the region,” Moses Ntlamelle, Senior Programme Officer responsible for Energy at the SADC Secretariat said.

Some of the measures were discussed and approved by the 34th SADC Energy Ministers Meeting held in late July in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This edition of Energy in Southern Africa profiles some of the decisions made by the ministers to address the power situation in the region. The decisions of the energy ministers were forwarded to the SADC Council of Ministers for final approval ahead of the 2015 SADC Heads of State and Government Summit held in Gaborone, Botswana in August.