Zimbabwe prices third party use of its grid, and dates the rules that would govern it.

For a generator weighing a direct sale to a mine or an export into the region, the cost of using Zimbabwe's wires is now published: 2.43 US cents per kilowatt hour on transmission and 5.19 cents on distribution, against an average tariff of 16.08 cents, up from 11.3 cents.

Those figures sit in the National Energy Compact for the Republic of Zimbabwe, the government's energy plan to 2030. It dates the rules a third party would need: by the first quarter of 2026, regulations letting outside parties onto the transmission lines on fair terms that favour no one user, and by the fourth quarter of 2026, a transmission pricing methodology brought into line with Southern African Power Pool standards. The electricity regulator and the power utility are also reviewing use of system charges downwards, and the regulator is building towards a domestic wholesale market.

Market reform on the supply side is more tentative. The Compact acknowledges that projects have mostly arrived unsolicited and self-sourced, and commits to a competitive framework covering private investment in renewables by the second quarter of 2026, with projects under 5 MW needing only registration rather than a licence from the first quarter of 2026.

What is already licensed sets the test. Installed capacity is 2,962 MW, yet dependable output runs between 1,200 MW and 1,600 MW against a 2,000 MW peak, and by March 2025 the regulator had licensed 7,876 MW of unsolicited private generation. At least 1,607 km of new lines are required, and the document attributes 80% of failed regional trade to missing transmission. The implication is that what gates an independent power producer is evacuation capacity and the offtaker's ability to pay, not a licence.

The utility side carries the rest. The Compact targets full operational cost recovery in local and foreign currency by the fourth quarter of 2027, the national utility's legacy debt resolved by the same point, and USD 9.13 billion of investment by 2030, 90% of the USD 3.81 billion generation share expected from private investors. On this reading, the charges stay indicative until the access regulations and the pricing methodology are in force, and those dates are what a wheeling case now turns on.