Africa-Press – Malawi. The days of candlelit board meetings, idle factories, and freezer-defrosting blackouts may soon be consigned to history as Malawi inches closer to completing the long-awaited Mozambique-Malawi (MOMA) Power Interconnector Project.
With September 30, 2025 set as the finish line for construction and commissioning expected by December, Malawians are daring to hope that reliable electricity is no longer a dream deferred.
“We have done our part—76 kilometres of line, towers, substations, and even resettling affected households. Now we wait for our Mozambican friends,” said ESCOM Chief Executive Officer Kamkwamba Kumwenda, after leading a delegation with Board Chairperson Gospel Kazako to Tete. “This project is not just about cables and towers—it is about making power blackouts a thing of the past.”
But the road to light has not been without shadows. Mozambique’s power utility EDM admits that vandalism and theft during election-related unrest stalled progress. “There were moments vandals invaded the contractor’s camp and literally took everything. What you see now is like starting all over again,” confessed Joao Catine, EDM’s Project Manager.
Adding to the challenge was the herculean task of installing two 195-metre towers to carry power across the mighty Zambezi River. “This is the tallest power line tower ever mounted in Africa,” said Ankit Kumar Sharma of Larsen & Toubro Limited, the project contractor.
Once completed, the $154 million project will plug Malawi into the Southern African Power Pool, initially importing 50 megawatts at a monthly cost of $4.5 million (about K7.8 billion). While reduced from the earlier planned 120MW, experts say the move is still a game-changer for Malawi’s struggling grid. For households and industries battered by years of unreliable supply, it could mean more than just lights—it could mean growth, jobs, and restored confidence.
And as the MOMA project races toward completion, attention is already shifting to the Accelerating Sustainable and Clean Energy Transformation (ASCENT) project, the successor to the hugely successful Malawi Electricity Access Project (MEAP). Funded by the World Bank to the tune of USD150 million, ASCENT targets to connect 235,000 households by 2030, building on MEAP’s near-achievement of its 180,000-household target.
The story of Malawi’s power sector is changing from scarcity to sustainability. From giant towers straddling the Zambezi to ambitious household connections lighting up villages, the message is clear: the blackout era is fading.
Or, as CEO Kumwenda summed it up: “This is not just power for today—it is energy for Malawi’s future.”
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