Solarplaza Summit | RE Trading Southern Africa

Werner van Antwerpen is Head Corporate Advisory at Growthpoint Properties. He is responsible for corporate finance strategy, some major transactions and investment decisions across the Group, with a focus on portfolio optimisation and strategic initiatives in the property and energy sectors. Werner joined Growthpoint in 2014 and previously led the company’s sustainability and utilities programmes nationwide. Prior to Growthpoint, he worked as a management consultant at Deloitte advising on corporate strategy and capital efficiency. He has also served on the boards of several Growthpoint strategic investments and was Chairman of SAPOA’s Sustainability Committee.

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.

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.

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.

Nthabiseng Mosia is a doctoral researcher at the Power Futures Lab, at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business. Her research examines how market design and policy choices shape renewable energy investment in contexts with emerging wholesale markets. She previously built and led a venture-backed distributed renewable energy company in West Africa, delivering off-grid rural electrification and commercial and industrial solar to weak-grid clients across Sierra Leone and Liberia, reaching over a million beneficiaries. As a South African-Ghanaian dual-citizen, Nthabi is Pan-African at heart, passionate about building community-driven solutions to Africa's development challenges. She was named Outstanding Social Entrepreneur in 2019 by the World Economic Forum, Young Entrepreneur of the Year by Forbes Africa Women in 2020, and an inaugural Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst in 2021.

Vincenzia Leitich has over 16 years of risk and investment banking project finance debt structuring experience at Standard Bank. Experience includes projects in energy and infrastructure across South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, including various asset classes, such as renewable energy, gas, water, hospitals, border posts; and various funding structures, including ECA and risk mitigation enhancements. Vincenzia has led many of the recently closed South African REIPPP and decentralised energy projects. For the last three years, Vincenzia has been involved in a more sector focused role, where key aspects include a focus on private power and the power developments in the South African space; as well as thought leadership and specific structural innovation.

Evan Rice is CEO of Etana Energy, a licensed energy trader that supplies wheeled renewable energy to business customers in SA. Evan has 20 years of experience in the energy and cleantech sectors in South Africa and Europe, working at the leading edge of the global energy transition in more liberalised electricity markets and rapidly decarbonizing power systems. He previously headed up Tesla's energy business for Europe, Middle East and Africa, was CEO at GreenCape and a consultant at McKinsey.

Hans-Arild has extensive international experience from various power market design and trading arrangements since 1992 where he was involved in developing the first market systems at Nord Pool. Hans- Arild has been working supporting the power industry with consultancy, advice, implementation and IT services connected to the establishment, design, regulations, implementation and operation of both national and regional power markets in more than 20 countries/regions stretching from the Nordics and Europe to California, China and Japan via India and the Gulf region to Eastern and Southern Africa. He has been one of the key partners in the development of the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) and has been closely involved in the evolution of the SAPP markets for the last two decades. In the recent years, Hans-Arild is working with EAPP where he was the project manager for their market design as well as a project on capacity building and now their implementation of the market itself. He is currently supporting national market reforms in South Africa, Zambia and Kenya. He has been working on the national market reforms in India and China as well as supporting regional initiatives in ASEAN. Hans-Arild is the CEO of Bredesen Consulting as well as a board member at International Centre for Hydropower and a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town.

Francois Viljoen is an Executive Director at Cresco Group with over 28 years’ experience in project finance and infrastructure development. He provides clients with Financial and Transaction Advisory services in the power and infrastructure sectors, supporting projects across the full development and funding lifecycle. His portfolio includes projects utilising a range of technologies including coal-fired, gas-fired, hydro, wind, solar, BESS and cogeneration. He has extensive experience in IPP procurement programmes, PPA negotiation, power wheeling structures, and navigating regulatory and licensing frameworks across South Africa and the broader SADC region, including complex cross-border transactions. Francois is a qualified Chartered Accountant CA(SA) and registered SAICA member. Prior to joining Cresco, he spent 5 years at the IDC and 6 years at Eskom, where he provided financial advisory support to cross-border initiatives and led Export Credit Agency funding processes for Eskom’s build programme. He subsequently joined Eskom’s Project Development Department, where he was responsible for developing and project managing South Africa’s first IPP procurement programmes, including the Pilot National Cogeneration Programme and the Medium-Term Power Purchase Programme.

Andrew Taylor has spent more than 15 years at the intersection of energy law, business development, renewable energy project finance, with transactions spanning Southern Africa and Europe.  As Head of Trading and a co-founder of NOA, he has been integral to the design of the company's trading model from the ground up - deliberately transparent, structured for long-term customer relationships and built to operate at scale in South Africa's liberalising electricity market. Andrew understands the regulatory environment not only as a constraint to navigate, but as a landscape to shape. His work sets the terms on which NOA's customers access clean energy, and on which NOA's generation partners bring their power to market.

Dr Roelof van Huyssteen is Head of Regulatory at the Energy Exchange of Southern Africa (EXSA). He leads the exchange’s work on the regulatory frameworks shaping South Africa’s emerging competitive electricity market. He has more than a decade of experience at the intersection of energy law, regulation and commercial strategy. Before joining EXSA, Roelof was Senior Manager for Energy Strategy and Law at PwC. There he led the strategy engagements and regulatory reform initiatives for national utilities, municipalities and development finance institutions across the electricity sector. Roelof holds a Doctorate in Laws on the regulation of renewable energy in South Africa from Nelson Mandela University. He is also an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa.

Ana Hajduka, Founder and CEO of Africa GreenCo, is qualified as a lawyer in both England & Wales and the State of New York and is an infrastructure and energy professional with more than 20 years' experience in a variety of transactions, including project finance, public-private partnerships, and project development, working on energy and infrastructure projects in emerging markets. Ana trained with Allen & Overy LLP and later worked for Fulbright & Jaworski LLP and Trinity International LLP, advising on a diverse range of energy sector projects, predominantly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ana negotiated and/or was involved in a number of renewable energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa and is an African IPP project finance and PPA risk allocation specialist. Ana also worked in an advisory role for power pools in Africa and is therefore well versed in the opportunities and benefits of regional power trading for risk diversification and power market creation. In March 2015, Ana was appointed by the UNECE as the Team Leader responsible for a Project Team (comprising about 30 specialists) tasked with developing international renewable energy PPP standards as part of the Sustainable Energy for All agenda.

Bryce Allan is Head of Sustainability at Teraco Data Environments, where he leads the company’s sustainability strategy, programme execution, and performance management. Passionate about advancing Africa’s digital future responsibly, he drives Teraco’s renewable energy ambitions through the development, construction, and procurement of renewable energy, spanning Teraco’s self build utility-scale solar projects as well as power purchases from independent power producers and energy traders. A qualified engineer with more than 18 years of experience in energy and infrastructure, Bryce has worked across engineering, strategy consulting, investment banking and project finance, and data centre infrastructure in South Africa and the UAE.

Jason has expertise in all aspects of project finance. He has advised lenders, sponsors and contractors on limited recourse project financings (including energy, oil and gas, resources and infrastructure transactions), public-private partnerships (PPPs), government support, partnerships and joint ventures, construction and operations contracts, power purchase agreements, procurement, syndicated and term loans, bond issues (including municipal debt) and securitisations (domestic and cross-border). Jason’s practice has a focus transactional and regulatory aspects of renewable energy IPP procurements, both by government and in private captive power transactions. His expertise has been recognised by various international research organisations including Chambers Global, IFLR1000, The Legal 500, Who’s Who Legal and Best Lawyers. Jason has an LLM (Banking & Finance) from University College London, LLB and B.Bus.Sci degrees from the University of Cape Town and is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa as well as an admitted solicitor in England and Wales. Jason has served on the Board of the South African Wind Energy Association.

Cathy Oxby is a co-founder and the Chief Commercial Officer of Africa GreenCo, a renewable energy trader headquartered in Zambia and an active member of the Southern African Power Pool. GreenCo is also licensed to trade electricity in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe and is actively expanding its operations into neighbouring countries. Its strong balance sheet and market-leading approach to power trading and risk management place GreenCo at the forefront of developments in the regional energy sector. Drawing on more than 20 years of professional experience in the infrastructure and renewable energy sectors, Cathy is closely involved in all aspects of GreenCo’s activities. In particular, she leads the commercial negotiation of the many innovative arrangements necessary to implement GreenCo’s operations, including financing, transaction structuring and regulatory and is deeply involved in the market reform processes which are underway across the region.

Engineer Alison Chikova is the Chief Engineer responsible for Planning and Operations at the Southern African Power Pool. He holds a Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering. He has experience in generation and transmission planning and project planning. He has been instrumental in the market design and transmission pricing arrangements in SAPP. Before joining SAPP, he was the Head of the generation planning unit at the power utility in Zimbabwe. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Member of the Zimbabwe Institute of Engineers, IEEE (USA) and IET (UK). Engineer Chikova is a holder of an Executive Diploma in Business Leadership.

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.