Nelspruit - The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has joined hands to ensure that South Africa has enough electricity during the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Under the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) banner, the countries have pledged to support South Africa in areas of power generation, transmission, customer contributions and demand side management.
"This initiative is part of Eskom's plans to ensure the reliability of electricity supply for the 2009 Confederations Cup and the 2010 FIFA World Cup," said Eskom spokesperson, Fani Zulu, on Monday.
Eskom Project 2010 unit managing director Johnny Dladla said the SAPP commitment indicated that the 2010 Soccer World Cup was not only for South Africa's benefit, but the rest of Africa.
"We are delighted with the level of co-operation we are receiving from our SAPP counterparts. This initiative confirms that the 2010 FIFA World Cup is truly and indeed an African event," said Mr Dladla.
The SAPP members include Empresa National de Electricidade in Angola, Botswana Power Cooperation, Societe National d'Electricite in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Electricity Supply Commission of Malawi.
In Mozambique there's Electricidade de Mozambique, Hydro Cahora Bassa and Mozambique Transmission Company.
In Zambia there is the Copperbelt Energy Corporation and Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation Limited.
NamPower in Namibia, Swaziland Electricity Company in Swaziland, Tanzania Electric Supply Company Limited in Tanzania, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority in Zimbabwe and Eskom in South Africa are also SAPP members.
"We are confident that South Africans, the region and football fans from around the world who will be visiting our continent will be able to look forward to an unforgettable African World Cup," said SAPP chairman Rhodnie Sisala.
Mr Sisala said major pre-event maintenance will be undertaken to ensure that maximum generating facilities will be continuously available to ensure reliability of supply.
He said SAPP members will also be concentrating on examining their present situations and returning specific regional generation facilities to service it will be required.
"Other initiatives include bringing co-generation plants into the SAPP grid and making more use of renewable energy sources," said Mr Sisala.
