Scrap-metal trade ‘eating’ Southern Africa’s power grid

By Collins Mtika

An under-policed trade in stolen power hardware is quietly turning Malawi’s electricity grid into part of a regional crime economy, undermining infrastructure investment and Southern Africa’s push toward an integrated electricity market.

Across the Southern African Development Community (SADC), power utilities are grappling with rising losses from vandalism and theft of grid infrastructure, from copper conductors to transformers and transmission towers.

For Malawi, the impact is increasingly visible.

The Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) estimates it loses about 3 billion kwacha annually through vandalised infrastructure and lost electricity revenue.

The damage not only disrupts supply but also diverts scarce funds from expanding the network in one of the world’s least electrified countries. But the problem is not uniquely Malawian.

South Africa’s utility reported losses of 221 million rand from theft and vandalism between April 2024 and February 2025, while Zimbabwe’s power utility estimates US$24 million in infrastructure losses since 2019.

Zambia’s national power company projects vandalism losses of roughly 25 million kwacha in 2025.

Although the figures are not directly comparable, together they point to a regional vulnerability that investors and lenders often treat as a local policing issue rather than a systemic infrastructure risk.

The renewed attention comes as SADC’s Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) develops a regional infrastructure security framework aimed at improving how utilities and law-enforcement agencies respond to attacks on electricity networks.

The initiative coincides with Malawi’s growing reliance on cross-border electricity flows through the Mozambique–Malawi Interconnector, a donor-backed transmission line designed to ease the country’s chronic power shortages and integrate it more deeply into the regional grid.

The paradox is obvious: the more interconnected Malawi becomes, the higher the stakes of every transmission tower cut and every cable stripped.

In Malawi, vandalism is far from abstract. ESCOM says the most common attacks include theft of transformer oil, cutting of aluminium conductors and stripping copper from both overhead and underground lines.

Each incident can leave schools, health centres, water-pumping stations and small businesses without electricity for days, sometimes weeks, particularly in peri-urban and rural areas.

In one widely reported case in 2025, ESCOM recovered stolen copper materials valued at 1.5 billion kwacha after they were intercepted in Zimbabwe while allegedly being transported to South Africa.

The case highlighted how stolen electricity infrastructure can move along regional scrap-metal supply chains before entering formal recycling markets.

At the other end of the spectrum are small-scale offenders.

In 2023, a court in Lilongwe sentenced a 26-year-old man to more than three years in prison for vandalising ESCOM infrastructure, illustrating how individuals are often drawn into the trade by quick cash from scrap dealers.

ESCOM has repeatedly argued that the problem is sustained by a largely unregulated scrap-metal market that provides an easy outlet for stolen materials.

Without tighter licensing, traceability and export controls, the utility says stronger policing and harsher sentences will only partially deter the trade.

For technicians on the ground, the result is a continuous cycle of repairs that diverts operational budgets away from network upgrades and new electricity connections.

Malawi has responded with some of the region’s toughest statutory penalties.

An amendment to the Electricity Act in 2024 introduced non-fineable prison sentences of up to 30 years for vandalising electricity infrastructure or possessing stolen equipment.

The aim is to signal that attacks on power infrastructure are economic crimes with national security implications rather than minor property offences. Still the losses persist.

Senior ESCOM officials recently told a SAPP gathering in Lilongwe that infrastructure security remains one of the utility’s three technical priorities, alongside system reliability and readiness for regional electricity trading.

Malawi’s Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Justin Saidi, has warned publicly that vandalism costing roughly 3 billion kwacha a year is undermining both grid reliability and investor confidence.

Part of the challenge lies in enforcement capacity. Police units and magistrates’ courts handle broad criminal caseloads, and prosecutions often suffer from weak case files and slow investigations.

Meanwhile, informal scrap dealers operate in a grey market where the risk of punishment is often lower than the potential gains. Without consistent seizures, convictions and closure of illicit scrapyards, organised syndicates face limited deterrence.

The issue is increasingly worrying regional planners. The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), a cooperation of national electricity companies across 12 SADC countries, coordinates power trading and cross-border infrastructure investments.

Repeated attacks on transmission lines and substations are eroding the returns on those investments and complicating long-term planning.

SAPP’s executive director, Stephen Dihwa, has acknowledged that member states are all facing rising costs linked to infrastructure vandalism despite tougher laws.

The organisation’s emerging security framework is intended to harmonise responses across the region, from intelligence sharing between law-enforcement agencies to technical measures such as asset marking, alarm systems and joint patrols along transmission corridors.

Energy ministers in the region are increasingly treating infrastructure vandalism as a cross-border threat comparable to wildlife poaching or illicit fuel trading.

For Malawi, deeper regional integration brings both opportunity and risk.

The Mozambique–Malawi Interconnector promises access to cheaper electricity and improved reliability, backed by financing from multilateral lenders and development partners.

But sustained attacks on the transmission line could quickly disrupt supply, jeopardise donor-funded programmes and raise concerns among investors assessing Malawi’s infrastructure resilience.

The economic consequences extend beyond balance sheets. In a March 2026 report by local media, health workers described extended outages after transformers were vandalised, disrupting operations at clinics and water supply schemes.

ESCOM staff interviewed in similar coverage said vandalism is also slowing electrification efforts because funds earmarked for new connections are increasingly diverted toward emergency repairs.

This is particularly damaging in a country where electricity access remains below 20% of the population. Each transformer destroyed represents not just a financial loss but a delayed promise of electrification for surrounding communities.

For urban small businesses, vandalism-driven outages add further uncertainty, pushing firms back toward expensive diesel generators even as donors and climate funds promote cleaner energy systems.

SAPP’s new framework aims to elevate vandalism from a series of isolated incidents to a recognised regional risk category. For policymakers and investors, however, several questions remain.

Will governments harmonise scrap-metal regulations across SADC to prevent criminals exploiting regulatory gaps between countries? Will law enforcement agencies begin treating electricity infrastructure vandalism as organised economic crime requiring specialised investigative units?

And how will the necessary security upgrades, from real-time line monitoring to aerial surveillance, be financed?

Utilities already under financial pressure may struggle to fund these technologies without concessional support from development lenders.

There is also a political economy dimension. Efforts to regulate scrap markets and informal cross-border metal trading can face resistance from local elites and communities that rely on those activities for income.

As ESCOM board director Welford Sabola has argued, cooperation with neighbouring countries is now critical to protecting high-voltage infrastructure. Whether such collaboration succeeds will depend on governments’ willingness to confront the entrenched interests that profit from the trade.

For now, Malawi’s electricity grid operates both as a national asset and as a target in a regional contest over metal, money and power.

If SADC’s emerging security framework leads to coordinated enforcement, it could quietly strengthen the resilience of Southern Africa’s power systems.

If it fails, infrastructure vandalism will remain an under-priced drag on growth, electrification and the region’s ambitions for a truly integrated electricity market.