Green Tiger Markets: SAPP Update
Dear Valued Client,
We hope you had a very enjoyable holiday season and a Happy New Year.
In early December we spent two weeks visiting SAPP market participants and energy industry stakeholders in Southern Africa. It was great to see the dynamic growth and optimism in the energy sector. We also heard strong enthusiasm for new tools and innovations that can help energy companies to secure financial performance and enable further growth.
We are excited to provide an important risk management solution for the Southern African energy market: a suite of standardized, proven, and secure financial contracts and a technology platform to efficiently match counterparties to meet their respective commercial needs.
This email shares some of the highlights and insights from the recent meetings in December and provides an outline for our next steps going forward.
We have shared the market registration documents with you separately; please feel free to reach out with any questions. We are hoping to receive your registration documents within January as we plan to launch the platform in early February.
Insights from Recent Stakeholder Meetings:
There is clearly a need for risk management tools for SAPP market participants and stakeholders. Companies noted substantial financial risk from the price volatility of the SAPP Day Ahead Market. Additionally, there are many profitable growth opportunities if the DAM price could be hedged.
There is a strong pipeline of new volumes (MWh) coming into the SAPP market in 2026 and beyond. This pipeline includes both projects from existing SAPP participants and from companies planning to join SAPP in the short/medium term.
We are encouraged to see growing interest from a range of countries within SAPP. Zambia is the clear leader so far, but there is growing interest from power companies across the SAPP region.
Market ‘splits’ from transmission congestion are a real concernand it is important for GTM to offer a contract with a North Zone regional reference price. This provides a powerful market-driven financial tool to mitigate geographic price differences within SAPP.
There are more than enough interested GTM participants for the market to “work.” In December, you might have heard us say that “one buyer and one seller is enough!” This is true, and 3-4 early participants is plenty for the early days. We are pleased to already have 15-20 energy companies in the region that are interested to join the GTM platform. It will take time for all to join but we are excited to see strong interest. The answer is a definitive ‘yes’ - there are more than enough participants for a viable market.
Initial Contracts Available At Launch:
At platform launch, we are planning to start with two contracts with the following SAPP Day Ahead Market reference prices:
1) ‘Unconstrained’ Monthly Average Market Clearing Price (MCP) (aka the “Grid Price”)
2) North Zone Monthly Average Market Clearing Price (MCP) (aka the “North Price”)
These reference prices refer to the published SAPP Baseload price. Shortly after launch we plan to enable contracts for Peak, Off-Peak, and Standard Prices.
As much as possible, it is best to limit the breadth of contracts in the early days. The goal is to be “good enough” to be valuable, not “perfect.” Offering too many unique contracts risks splitting the liquidity. However, if your company has a strong preference for non-baseload price contracts, please let us know. Over time, we intend to add additional contracts based on market interest.
Collaborative Approach:
We would like to emphasize that we are very open for feedback and guidance from the market participants and wider stakeholders. Our goal is to provide solutions that are widely used and valuable for the market participants. Many of the ideas and approaches we are following today have come from SAPP market participants themselves. We enjoy these conversations and are always looking for input from the wider SAPP community as we move forward. Thank you in advance for your collaboration!
‘Staging Environment’ Demo Accounts:
We have shared staging / ‘sandbox’ accounts for a number of companies that wanted to do some GTM hedging platform “practicing.” Please let us know and we would be happy to set up staging accounts for your team. We can also schedule a virtual or in-person meeting to do a platform walkthrough with your team.
Equity Partner Program:
We are interested in providing a path for the most active early adopters of the GTM Africa platform to become equity co-owners in the business. This would be eligible for a couple of companies that agree to trade large volumes and act as a liquidity provider. If you are interested in discussing this further please let us know.
Upcoming Dates in Southern Africa
Andrew will be in Lusaka Jan 12-14 and Johannesburg Jan 14-15, and then Andrew and John will both be back in the region again Jan 26-Feb 5. We can come visit your office to discuss any combination of the following:
1. Tutorial/demo of the trading platform
2. Discussion of commercial/hedging strategies
3. Legal questions about the contracts/platform. For detailed legal / contract questions, we can have our General Counsel Oliver Pearson join the call from Singapore (he has decades of experience in commodity derivatives and financial markets law and he wrote the contracts and much of the GTM market rulebook).
To schedule a meeting or if you have any questions, please email Andrew Koger: [email protected].
Thank you all again for the support and enthusiastic interest. We are excited to collaborate together with the SAPP community in 2026 and in the years to come. As mentioned, if you would like to move forward, please send us your registration docs as soon as possible, as we plan to launch the market in early February. There is no cost to register. We hope to welcome you as one of the pioneering founder market participants of GTM Africa.
Wishing you a healthy and productive 2026!
John Knorring
CEO, Green Tiger Markets
