Eswatini is opening its energy sector to investors and developers, but Prime Minister Russell Dlamini says the country wants partnerships that create long-term ownership, jobs, skills and local industrial capacity.
Speaking at the Africa Oil Week (AOW) Energy Summit in Accra, Ghana, Dlamini invited credible investors to participate in generation, transmission, storage, petroleum infrastructure and emerging technologies.
He said Eswatini’s approach was to attract investment while ensuring that local companies benefit from and participate meaningfully in the development of the sector. 
“We have opened our electricity sector to Independent Power Producers, who must participate not simply as contractors, but as developers, investors and owners,” Dlamini said.
“Energy security today is economic and national security,” Dlamini said. He said reliable and competitively priced electricity was also critical to industrialisation. “Africa cannot industrialise without abundant, reliable, competitively priced power,” he said.
Dlamini said energy investment should help African countries move beyond exporting raw materials and importing finished products. “We can no longer export minerals and import machinery, export commodities and import processed goods. We must beneficiate, refine and manufacture,” he said.
The Prime Minister said investors entering Eswatini should leave behind more than infrastructure, calling for partnerships that create jobs, transfer skills, strengthen research and build indigenous companies.
Eswatini welcomes credible partnerships in generation, transmission, storage, petroleum infrastructure and emerging technology, investment that leaves enduring value in jobs, skills, research capacity and indigenous companies capable of standing as equal commercial partners,” he said.
Dlamini said the approach was necessary because African operators often compete with higher capital costs, imported technology and weaker balance sheets.
“We cannot proclaim an era of indigenous operators while leaving in place the very architecture that consigns African enterprise to junior status,” he said.
He called for transparent local-content policies, easier access to capital and markets, technology acquisition and strategic public procurement to strengthen African companies.
Dlamini also urged greater use of African capital to finance African infrastructure, saying pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, development finance institutions and capital markets could play a larger role.
Dlamini also highlighted his delegation’s engagement with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, saying its experience across the energy value chain provided useful lessons for Eswatini.
“We must move from participation to ownership. From extraction to beneficiation. From dependency to capability,” he said.
Dlamini also invited investors and developers to engage with Eswatini ahead of the SADC Sustainable Energy Week,
which the country will host from 15 to 19 March 2027 under the theme “Unlocking Investment for Sustainable Energy, Energy Access and Energy Security in the SADC Region.”
