As a pre-Valentine’s Day gift, Eswatini has been presented with a bouquet of ‘red roses’ by the World Bank for earning a rightful place in the continental spotlight. The bank’s inaugural Business Ready (B-READY) 2025 Report ranked us 10th among Africa’s best-performing economies.
The financial institution has expressed admiration for the country’s cross-institutional reforms, which they see as having produced quantifiable outcomes. It has listed these as: Faster business registration, digitised services, a functioning Commercial Court and streamlined trade facilitation serving as a one-stop shop. It describes this development as a genuine improvement in the daily experience of entrepreneurs who now find it easier to start and sustain businesses in the country.
Flowers must go to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade, the Eswatini Investment Promotion Authority (EIPA), the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) and (surprise, surprise) our utility companies for this achievement. However, the champagne bottles readied to celebrate this feat may have to remain in the ice buckets, as one of the utility companies, Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC), has increased the emotional voltage of the populace after the announcement that from April, every E100 note will purchase just 34 units of electricity, which is a drop from the previous 43 units.
The Eswatini Energy Regulatory Authority’s (ESERA) approval of an average 13.61 per cent tariff hike is putting out the lights for many a family and has cast an air of apprehension over the implications of this move regarding the cost of doing business in the country and the general cost of living. A glaring conundrum emerges in trying to find an answer to how the country can remain among the continent’s top 10 most business-ready environments when its most essential industrial input grows more expensive by the season.
Is this the price we have to pay for all the ‘wasted years’ while dilly-dallying on the question of independent power production? Policy frameworks were drafted, masterplans were launched and roadmaps were drawn. Yet, three decades later, we are still importing the majority of our power from our neighbours, whose own capacity constraints and tariff escalations lie beyond Eswatini’s control.
This is not planning, it is exposing the nation to an environment akin to leaving fallen live electricity cables on the ground unattended for years. This exposure now threatens the very job creation initiatives the B-READY ranking was meant to enhance.
In a conversation with the EIPA Chief Executive Officer Sibani Mngomezulu, the anxiety of the latest developments was palpable as he pointed out how investors make commitments based mainly on the cost of energy supply. For them, when these calculations are disrupted, expansion plans are deferred, hiring freezes take hold and profits take a knock. The entity is unsure if it can absorb the electricity hike or pass it on to its clients. Business Eswatini has signalled it will conduct a full impact analysis, mindful that energy-intensive firms may reconsider their regional competitiveness. The Consumer Forum meanwhile, is exploring whether legal avenues exist to appeal the regulator’s decision. Economist Sanele Sibiya has warned of a second round of inflationary effects and reduced disposable income, as well as a potential chilling effect on industrial expansion.
The Managing Director of Ubombo Sugar Limited, Muzi Siyaya, recently shared an opinion piece on this matter, pointing out that the country’s electricity model, once functional, now relies on outdated assumptions, as South Africa no longer provides affordable, dependable surplus power. He argued that import dependency is no longer a strategy but a vulnerability and that baseload security does not require monopoly generation. He said modern power systems achieve reliability through portfolio diversification, firm contracts and dispatchable domestic capacity, not through exclusive control. Ubombo Sugar has committed E1.5 billion of private capital to expand its biomass co-generation capacity to 40 MW, a project now under contract with EEC and backed by E900 million in domestic financing. This power will be delivered at a tariff below the cost of importing an equivalent volume from Eskom, which, in effect, can serve as a hedge against the factors that drive tariff applications.
More significantly, Siyaya has advanced the argument that EEC’s future lies not in attempting to finance generation it cannot afford, but in monetising its transmission and distribution infrastructure while independent producers deliver the megawatts.
In simple terms, public-private partnership is the only realistic solution to the energy challenge we face as a country. He has a point, if not a couple.
This is not a contested theory. It is reality. Eswatini cannot industrialise on expensive, imported and increasingly volatile electricity. It cannot attract export-orientated manufacturers, while its input costs rank unfavourably among regional competitors.The B-READY ranking is genuine progress and it ought to be celebrated. However, it will not be sustained if the very infrastructure upon which business depends continues to price enterprises out of viability.
With the World Bank rating, Eswatini now possesses proof that it can reform to highly competitive levels. The question is whether it can translate that capacity from the commercial registry to the power grid.
The 34-unit reality represents the outcome of decades of hesitation. Repeating those mistakes is unacceptable and inexcusable at this late hour. The time for action was years ago. The next best time is now!
NB: Wishing you all a Happy Valentine’s Day tomorrow! We may as well use the day to start getting used to dinner by candlelights, given the circumstances.
The financial institution has expressed admiration for the country’s cross-institutional reforms, which they see as having produced quantifiable outcomes.