Sanlam Alternative Investments, the alternative investments business of South Africa’s Sanlam Investments, has become the first private institutional shareholder in Africa GreenCo following a USD 10 million investment for a 10% stake in the energy trader and aggregator. GreenCo is the leading private energy player trading on the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP).
The investment by Sanlam Alternative Investments according to GreenCo will further scale its trading operations. With more than 2 TWh of electricity traded to date, GreenCo holds the highest purchase-side market share across SAPP’s competitive markets and also has significant renewable capacity at commercial operation.
The energy trader highlighted that gaining its first commercial private institutional investor affirms the conviction that Africa’s energy transition will scale only when the continent has its own creditworthy, commercially bankable market infrastructure.
“We built GreenCo on the belief that Africa should not wait for someone else to finance its energy transition; if the continent can provide its own creditworthy, commercially bankable market infrastructure then institutional capital will follow,” said Pug Bennet, Co-founder and Group CFO of GreenCo.
“This round positions GreenCo to further scale and to keep delivering the bankable offtake that finances new generation and the reliable, increasingly low-carbon power that commercial and large industrial users across the region depend on” added Bennet.
GreenCo integrated model
GreenCo’s unique model brings together four capabilities into a single, customer-led proposition: bankable long-term offtake with renewable IPPs; power purchase agreements with mines, commercial and industrial customers, and utilities; continuous regional trading across the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) — and soon, the emerging South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM); plus active portfolio optimisation.
For IPPs and their lenders, GreenCo offers a creditworthy counterparty without single-buyer exposure. For commercial and industrial consumers, it delivers reliable, lower-carbon power while absorbing market complexity on their behalf. And for utilities, it provides a partner that strengthens system outcomes through wheeling, settlement, and the regional market itself. Sanlam Alternative Investments, for its part, has long been a pioneer in South Africa’s clean energy ecosystem and across the wider continent.
“GreenCo occupies the part of the energy value chain that determines whether new power generation is actually delivered. For Sanlam Alternative Investments, this investment is a natural extension of more than a decade of infrastructure investment across the continent: backing the market architecture that allows Africa to finance its own energy transition on commercial terms, while supporting the reliable, increasingly low-carbon power that economic growth depends on,” Mark Moorhouse, Executive Head: Infrastructure Finance, Sanlam Alternative Investments.
Today, GreenCo operates across Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, with licensing underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The energy trader has also earned international recognition for its model — including selection by TIME as one of the world’s top GreenTech companies in 2025, and IJ Global’s Solar Deal of the Year for Africa in 2025.
