Botswana secures mega deal to revamp Morupule plants
Lewanika Timothy | Wednesday November 12, 2025 06:00
President Duma Boko has announced that the government has secured a multi-billion pula deal with a consortium of global investors to rehabilitate Morupule B, extend Morupule A’s life by 15 years, and put the country on the path to energy self-sufficiency.
Addressing a presser on Thursday, Boko said the government would, later in the day, sign an agreement with multibillion-dollar investors who will inject capital and new technology into the national power system.
“Morupule B has not been performing optimally since its commissioning. There is great potential to make it super-optimal, the technology exists, and the biggest players in that space are already in the country, ready to roll,” Boko said.
Built at a cost spanning billions of pulas and commissioned in 2012, Morupule B was designed to generate 600 megawatts, enough to make Botswana energy-independent. Instead, it became the symbol of the country’s power crisis. The plant was quickly dogged by design defects, including boiler failures, air-leak problems and cracked steam ducts. By 2015, most of its units had broken down, forcing the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) to rely heavily on electricity imports from South Africa’s Eskom.
Frequent load-shedding disrupted industry and households alike, whilst government was forced to spend billions on emergency repairs and subsidies to keep BPC afloat. Rehabilitation efforts between 2019 and 2023 produced limited results, with generation rarely reaching half of design capacity.
Boko said the new investors bring proven expertise in coal-plant optimisation and grid modernisation. “They will reconfigure both Morupule A and B to ensure reliability and efficiency,” he said, adding that the smaller Morupule A, which was due for decommissioning by 2027, will now have its operational life extended by 15 years.
The project will also include modernising the national transmission network, creating an interconnected grid that can export surplus power through the Southern African Power Pool.
“What this means is that we will no longer need to import electricity from South Africa at a cost of around P3 billion annually,” Boko said. “Once we stop those imports, that money stays within our economy and can be reinvested into national development.”
If successfully implemented, the rehabilitation of Morupule could mark Botswana’s emergence as a regional power exporter, ending more than a decade of instability and chronic underperformance in the energy sector.