Friday, 29th August 2025
非洲记者报道
East Africa has finally flipped the switch on something planners have promised for years: cross-border power that moves to where it’s needed, when it’s needed. After the 500-kV Ethiopia–Kenya HVDC “electricity highway” was commissioned in 2022, Kenya and Tanzania energized their 400-kV interconnector in December 2024 and hit a key milestone in January 2025. In July, operators completed pilot wheeling of Ethiopian electricity through Kenya into Tanzania—an early-stage proof that the three-country chain works.
The numbers are beginning to look real. Kenya’s grid operator has discussed anticipated wheeling revenues from facilitating Ethiopia-Tanzania trade, while sector trackers reported pilots moving tens of megawatts southward as Kenya simultaneously imported from Ethiopia to meet its own peak. Tanzania, facing periodic generation shortfalls during drought, gains a flexible backstop that can buffer hydropower variability and support industry. Ethiopia, with growing surplus from dams and wind, gains a paying outlet. All three win if losses are managed and contracts are bankable.
Why it matters now: the continent’s “Mission 300” push—connecting 300 million Africans by 2030—needs wires as much as it needs watts. In January, multilaterals pledged more than $8 billion to the access drive; cross-border lines leverage that money by making each new kilowatt more valuable across a wider market. Meanwhile, COMESA partners relaunched the Zambia–Tanzania–Kenya (ZTK) interconnector in April, a north-south spine that, when complete, links the Eastern and Southern African power pools—exactly the redundancy Africa’s power transition will need.
The homework left is commercial: standardizing wheeling tariffs, tightening grid codes, and building smart dispatch so that electrons move in real time to the best-paying, most-needy node. None of this is sexy, but it is what turns a ribbon-cutting into a functional market. If regulators move quickly, manufacturers in Dar es Salaam and Arusha should start to feel steadier voltage under their expansion plans—especially in drought years that once forced factories onto costly diesel. Policymakers should also be upfront about the trade-offs: contracts that underpin imports must be transparent and competitively priced to avoid public backlash.
The prize is continental: a corridor where clean surplus in the Horn can firm up grids down to the Copperbelt—and, when their rains return, the flows can reverse. That’s what “power without borders” actually looks like, and East Africa has finally put metal in the ground to get there.
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