Zambia's regulator has published the test a power purchase agreement must pass.

For a generator or an offtaker signing a power purchase agreement in Zambia, the standard the regulator will hold that agreement to is now a public document. The Energy Regulation Board, the country's electricity regulator, published it on 29 May 2026 under the heading "Guidelines for the Review of Power Purchase and Supply Agreements".

Two kinds of contract sit behind that title. A power purchase agreement is the long dated contract under which a generator sells its output and a buyer commits to pay for it. A power supply agreement is the contract under which a buyer takes delivery of electricity. The guidelines state the minimum each kind of agreement is expected to contain, and they set out the process the Board works through before it decides to approve an agreement or to reject it.

Assessment: for an independent power producer, the change is one of sequence rather than substance, since a requirement that is published can be drafted into heads of terms rather than answered once a signed agreement is already with the regulator.

Guidance of this kind describes how a regulator intends to read a document rather than changing what the parties have agreed. Each agreement is still judged on its own, and the Board keeps the decision to approve one or to turn it down.

On this reading, the exposure sits with the parties, because the state power utility and its counterparties carry the cost of any distance between an agreement drafted under earlier practice and requirements published now.

Read together, this is market reform of a procedural kind, and what cannot yet be priced is how the published requirements meet agreements already in force, whether at amendment, at renewal, or only when the next contract is signed.