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A farm near Norton town in Chegutu area is being subdivided ahead of the planned establishment a “smart city” with a 105MW solar plant, 3 500 residential stands and 29 institutions including primary and secondary schools.

All the houses to be built will have solar panels on the roof to aid electricity generation from the settlement into the national grid during daylight hours and to give the houses stored back-up at night and when power is down.

Redwing Farm is owned by former Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor and TD Holdings Africa chairman, Dr Gideon Gono.

Speaking during an all stakeholders’ consultation meeting at Chegutu Rural District Council offices, which was attended by representatives from Government ministries, farmers and the business community, Dr Gono said Zimbabwe was headed for an upper middle-income economy by 2030 under President Mnangagwa’s leadership.

“We looked into the Government’s blueprint of an upper middle income economy and believe that the nation has to be built by its citizens,” said Dr Gono.

“We shouldn’t wait for foreigners to develop our country and this project has been stalling for five years despite having a lot of people without power and shelter.

“People in our towns including Norton, Chegutu and the rest of the nation, are facing power load shedding as a result of deficit. Through our developmental plans, we made it a point that power supply issues are addressed and, I am happy to announce that after various public consultations we have been agreed to establish a solar farm.”

Dr Gono said the project has international funding and consultations had been held with the country’s energy supply and regulation bodies, Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company and Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority and other Government departments.

Once the project has been implemented, Mashonaland West will become the first province in Zimbabwe to produce 105MW of electricity from solar.

Presently, Centragrid Energy Systems Africa is working on the second phase of its solar photovoltaic plant at Nyabira, about 35km west of Harare along Chinhoyi Road, which will expand its generation capacity from 2,5MW to the full licensed capacity of 25MW.

Chegutu RDC chairman, Mr Tafadzwa Gwinji, said the development of Redwing Smart City and the solar farm dovetails with the council’s expansion drive following an allocation of over 1 000ha by Government to their council and the Chegutu Municipality for a mega town.

Norton town planner, Mr Vengai Mashavira, called on the developers of the Redwing Smart City to include landfills into their master plan to ensure efficient rubbish disposal.

TD Holding chief operations officer, Ms Monica Vambe, immediately responded saying all was in place.

Other stakeholders called for the construction of good and durable roads in the impeding settlement.

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Autor(en)/Author(s): Conrad Mupesa

Quelle/Source: The Herald, 07.04.2022

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