Sanlam Alternative Investments has invested $10 million to acquire a 10% equity stake in Africa GreenCo, becoming the first private institutional shareholder in the Southern African renewable energy trader. The deal, announced on 22 May 2026, signals growing mainstream investor confidence in commercially driven energy market infrastructure across the continent. GreenCo, which has traded more than 2 TWh of electricity and holds the highest purchase-side market share within the Southern African Power Pool’s competitive markets, plans to use the capital to scale its operations further across the region and into new countries.
Key Overview
- Investment amount: $10 million for a 10% equity stake
- Investor: Sanlam Alternative Investments (part of the broader Sanlam group)
- Target: Africa GreenCo Group Limited, a renewable energy trader and buyer
- Significance: First private institutional shareholder in GreenCo
- GreenCo’s trading volume: Over 2 TWh of electricity traded to date
- Geographic presence: Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, with DRC licensing under way
- Sanlam’s track record: Over ZAR 17 billion (~$1 billion) deployed into 40 sustainable infrastructure projects across Africa
- GreenCo’s long-term target: 3 GW of new renewable generation capacity and $5.6 billion in renewable investment by 2030
Sanlam Alternative Investments has taken a 10% equity stake in Africa GreenCo for $10 million, becoming the first private institutional shareholder in the Lusaka-headquartered renewable energy trader and buyer. The transaction, announced on 22 May 2026, represents a landmark moment for the company and for Africa’s broader energy transition agenda, signalling that mainstream institutional capital is increasingly willing to back the continent’s emerging energy trading infrastructure as an investable asset class in its own right.
GreenCo operates as a creditworthy intermediary between renewable energy producers and power consumers across Southern Africa. The company integrates four core capabilities into a single customer-led proposition: bankable long-term offtake agreements with renewable independent power producers; power sale agreements with mines, commercial and industrial customers, and utilities; continuous regional trading across the Southern African Power Pool; and active portfolio optimisation. This model provides each stakeholder in the value chain with what they need most — for IPPs and their lenders, a creditworthy counterparty that eliminates single-buyer risk; for commercial and industrial consumers, reliable lower-carbon power delivered without the complexity of navigating the market themselves; and for utilities, a partner that strengthens system outcomes through wheeling, settlement and regional market participation.
A Decade of Infrastructure Capital Meets Energy Market Innovation
The investment is a natural extension of Sanlam Alternative Investments’ long-standing focus on African infrastructure. Over the past decade, the firm has deployed more than ZAR 17 billion — approximately $1 billion — into 40 sustainable infrastructure projects across the continent, including through its Sustainable Infrastructure Fund. The broader Sanlam Investments business manages more than R1 trillion in assets, giving the group significant weight in African financial markets.
Mark Moorhouse, Executive Head of Infrastructure Finance at Sanlam Alternative Investments, described GreenCo as occupying a critical and often overlooked segment of the energy value chain — the part that determines whether new power generation actually gets built. “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,” Moorhouse said.
The deal also reflects a broader shift in how institutional investors view Africa’s energy transition. As the Daily Maverick’s analysis noted, one of the biggest barriers to renewable energy development on the continent is no longer technology or generation costs but rather market structure, bankable offtake arrangements, credit risk and regional trading capability. GreenCo’s integrated platform directly addresses these bottlenecks, and Sanlam’s investment signals that commercial investors are starting to recognise the opportunity embedded in this layer of infrastructure.
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GreenCo’s Growth Trajectory
GreenCo was originally conceived in 2015 when co-founder and CEO Ana Hajduka secured the first grant from The Rockefeller Foundation for a feasibility study. Early-stage catalytic funding from P4G Partnerships — $600,000 in 2018 and $1 million in 2019 — helped advance the model. By 2021, GreenCo had secured regulatory approval in Zambia and began operations with a 25 MW solar photovoltaic pilot project. That same year, the company was admitted to the Southern African Power Pool, becoming the first entity to join under the Market Participant category with the unanimous support of all SAPP members, including every national utility in the region.
In April 2022, the company achieved its second financial close with an equity investment of $15.5 million from IFU, EDFI ElectriFI and InfraCo Africa, providing capital to scale up operations as a regional creditworthy buyer of renewable energy and grow its supply portfolio to an initial capacity of up to 110 MW.
The company has since grown rapidly. GreenCo now 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 has traded more than 2 TWh of electricity to date and claims the highest purchase-side market share across SAPP’s competitive markets. It plans to extend operations to Angola, Botswana, DRC, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania in the coming years.
A significant regulatory milestone came in October 2024, when GreenCo Power Services became the first private sector entity to receive trading and import/export licences from South Africa’s National Energy Regulator, enabling the company to operate within South Africa’s competitive electricity market and facilitate cross-border transactions through the SAPP. The company’s longer-term ambition is to support three gigawatts of new renewable energy generation capacity and mobilise $5.6 billion in renewable energy investment by 2030.
Why the Investment Matters for Africa’s Energy Transition
The Sanlam deal carries significance beyond its dollar value. GreenCo’s co-founder and CFO Pug Bennet framed the investment as validation of the company’s founding thesis. “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,” Bennet said. He added that Sanlam Alternative Investments’ ambition to become Africa’s premier sustainable and impact investor aligned directly with GreenCo’s role in the region’s power markets, and that the new capital would position the company to keep delivering the bankable offtake that finances new generation.
The investment also arrives at a time of growing momentum behind regional electricity trading systems. The SAPP remains one of Africa’s most advanced regional electricity trading platforms, but cross-border electricity trade has historically been dominated by state utilities and constrained by weak utility finances and limited transmission infrastructure. GreenCo has emerged as one of the most prominent new market intermediaries working to change that dynamic, and its model is particularly relevant to the mining sector. With 22 GW of solar and wind capacity expected to come on stream across Southern Africa over the next five years and new copper mines driving demand, the company operates in what its team describes as a sellers’ market.
The company has also gained international recognition, including being named among TIME’s top GreenTech companies in 2025 and receiving multiple IJGlobal awards linked to energy transition financing and market innovation.
For Sanlam Alternative Investments, the equity stake in GreenCo adds 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 borders. As the energy transition in Southern Africa matures beyond project-level financing toward the market infrastructure that makes it all work, the Sanlam-GreenCo deal may well prove to be a template for a new wave of institutional investment in the continent’s power future.
Sources: Daily Maverick / Moneyweb / Innovation Village / Newsday Zimbabwe / The Southern Eye / Zambia Monitor / Africa Private Equity News / Engineering News / VUKA Group / P4G Partnerships / Business Report / Zawya / African Energy Week
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