Solarplaza Summit | RE Trading Southern Africa

Dick founded Subsolar in 2010 and has been a driving force behind the company’s growth in the renewable energy sector. With over 20 years of experience in sales and business development across the B2B market in Europe and Africa, Dick brings deep industry knowledge and strategic insight.

Palesa Zwane is a Middle Manager: Energy Clearing Operations within the Market Operator at the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA). She is part of the team responsible for the operational readiness of the South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM), focusing on market operations, business processes, and stakeholder preparedness ahead of market go-live. She leads the SAWEM Market School, NTCSA’s national capacity-building programme established to prepare prospective SAWEM Market participants, policymakers, regulators, investors, and financial institutions for participation in the new wholesale electricity market. Palesa has over 20 years of experience in the electricity sector, primarily within Eskom, where she has held roles in pricing and contracts management, customer services, and market-related operations. She holds qualifications in Economics and Business Management and is currently completing a Master of Management in Energy Leadership.

Farid Mohamed has 35 years of project financing experience working with both public and private sector clients in Europe and, for the past 30 years, in Africa. He has detailed knowledge of structuring multi-currency project financing for new projects and for privatized institutions using a wide range of debt and equity instruments, including interest rate and currency swaps and options, export credit finance, commercial bank debt, and mezzanine finance, and with a wide range of investors: development finance banks, bilateral and multilateral agencies, commercial banks, private equity funds. Prior to that Farid spent 10 years conceptualising, designing and installing offshore oil and gas production facilities in the North Sea, one of the most challenging environments in the world. Farid has worked as a consultant with the African Development Bank leading energy project finance mandates. And more recently was the Chief Transactions Advisor for the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), with responsibilities for arranging financing for new interconnector transmission lines and power projects under development by SAPP, and for developing a funding platform for regional transmission projects.

Stephen Dihwa has over 30 years of experience in the power sector. He started with Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) in 1988 and rose through the ranks to Business Development Director of the Transmission subsidiary up to 2007. Worked as System Planning Advisor in EdM (Mozambique) in 2007 and as Senior Manager responsible for Planning and then Renewable Energy & System Integration in NamPower (Namibia) from 2008 to 2012. He worked from 2013 to 2016 as a consultant Power Engineer for the African Development Bank in Zimbabwe. He was Principal Director in the Ministry of Energy and Power Development of Zimbabwe from 2016 to 2017. Joined SAPP in December 2017. In his current role as Executive Director of the SAPP Coordination Centre he oversees the planning of the interconnected grid, operations of the system, environmental management aspects, project preparation and electricity trading. The Coordination Centre acts as the Market Operator of the SAPP competitive electricity market which currently runs month-ahead, week-ahead, day-ahead and intra-day markets. The region covers the 12 mainland Southern African Development Community (SADC) states.

Edwin founded Solarplaza company in 2004. He is a senior PV expert and started in the photovoltaic solar energy business in 1994. He has experience as a solar energy consultant and project developer in more than 200 PV projects. Edwin holds a Master’s degree in Chemical engineering and previously worked in the Chemical industry before starting his first consultancy company in PV in 1994.

Marc is a director of APV with more than 15 years of experience in Southern African power market strategy, commercial modelling, and regulatory advisory. He is one of the architects of APV’s PyPSA-based Southern African electricity system models which are used for their market modelling and SAPP/SAWEM price forecasting engagements. He has worked for utilities, regulators, project developers, traders and energy intensive consumers across Southern and East Africa.

Emmanuel Chilombo Kalenga is the Managing Director of Enterprise Power Zambia Ltd, leading a $270 million venture to build Sub-Saharan Africa's first privately financed, cross-border high-voltage transmission line. Holding an engineering degree from the University of Zambia and management qualifications from the University of Pretoria, he brings over two decades of expertise in infrastructure and mining operations. Under his leadership, the landmark 330kV Kalumbila-Kolwezi Interconnector Project will bridge Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Having secured key regulatory approvals and advisory backing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Kalenga is pioneering a bankable private-capital model to help resolve the region's energy crisis.

Bronwyn has over 20 years of experience in business development, strategy implementation, stakeholder management, complex reporting and design thinking across a variety of sectors, including solar renewable energy (at SOLA Group), fast moving consumer goods (at AB InBev and SAB), pension and unclaimed benefits (at Robin Hood), and various others. Bronwyn's current role at SOLA Group, as the Business Development Manager involves selling large-scale utility and private wheeling contracts to private sector organisations via Power Purchase Agreements. This included the development and sale of rolling contracts from Project Springbok (150MW PV farm in the Free State) which had 30% unallocated power available from Q3 2025. These shorter and more flexible PPAs have provided opportunities for small to medium size businesses to take advantage of wheeled power via the Eskom grid. Bronwyn is also preparing SOLA for the launch of the South African Wholesale Electricity Market as well as their involvement in the launch of Virtual Wheeling in South Africa.