By Abel Ikiloni in Berlin, Germany

Berlin, August 23, Mana: President Dr Lazarus Chakwera on Thursday witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Malawi and Re-Thinking Foundation for the 50 megawatt solar farm project between Mzuzu University (Mzuni) and Tauber Solar in Berlin, Germany.

Minister of Energy, Ibrahim Matola, signed the MoU on behalf of the government of Malawi.

He described the MoU as a great milestone in the energy sector where Ministry of Energy, Egenco as a generating company and Mzuni have signed an MoU with Germany company Sun Power Africa Limited in order to develop the solar park in Malawi.

Early this year, President Chakwera made an emphasis of adding more power to the country’s grid.

Matola said the signing of the MoU will see students doing engineering and electrical at Mzuni doing practical work and exchange of programs.

“The President has been talking about job creation; Malawians are going to be employed, the youth, who are graduates, and those doing engineering and electrical will also be employed in order to develop the solar power park,” Matola said.

Shareholder and Chief Executive Officer for Tauber Solar Group, Zeno Fleck, said the project is a great business investment for the people of Malawi as it will create employment.

“We will start the project immediately; we made the visibility study and in the next four weeks the project will start. It is a huge project which will need about 100 people from the beginning and we are investing about €70 million,” he said.

Mzuzu Vice Chancellor, Professor Wales Singini, expressed excitement because Mzuni has an idea of taking part in the energy sector through development of its solar farm at Choma.

“Our initial idea was that we should be able to provide a platform for our students to learn practically in terms of how to deal with renewable energy systems but at the same time, as a university, we should also be able to generate some resources to support our functionality,” he said.

He said the university took the idea seriously by working through all processes such as the visibility study and all what is required after getting permission from the Minister of Energy.

“We were given a go ahead to engage ESCOM for the possibility of obtaining power purchase agreement and we have reached an advanced stage,” he said.