Chiti Mataka

I joined the national power utility, which is also a State-Owned Enterprise (SoE), on 5 March, 1993. I left ZESCO Limited at the position of Director of Commercial and Customer Services in December, 2021.

During this long period of uninterrupted service, I had the opportunity to develop practical skills in the areas of:

a) Institutional Strengthening and Capacity Building

1. February 2003 - I was a part of a ZESCO team that made a 2-week visit to a major Swedish power utility - Vattenfall - in which we had practical exposure to energy trading as well as a site visit to one of their major, nuclear powered power stations.

2. April 2006 - We made a one-month benchmarking trip to the utilities of four (4) African power utilities including: ESKOM (Republic of South Africa); EDM (Mozambique); Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC), and Kenya Generation Company (KenGen) - Kenya; North Cairo Distribution Company and South Cairo Distribution Company - Egypt.

3. July 2012 - One week Euromoney training programme in Lagos, Nigeria.

4. October - November 2017: Senior Executive Development Programme at the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

5. August 2019: Senior Executives Training Programme in Cybersecurity - Jerusalem, State of Israel, with Elbit Systems.

b) Project Management

1. Energy Regulation Board (ERB) sponsored Cost of Service Study, CoSS - mid-2006

I was the principal counterpart for ZESCO Limited on this project , whose other participants were the ERB itself and IPA Energy Consultants of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was the first time a commonly agreed financial and tariff pricing model was developed for the Electricity Supply Industry, ESI, in Zambia.

It was commissioned in 2006, and the principles laid out in this first CoSS are the standard reference point for succeeding studies and models.

2. Itezhi-Tezhi Hydroelectric Power Project (ITT HEPP): US$ 250 M, 120 MW.

I was appointed as chairperson of The Transaction Advisory Support Committee to the management executive committee of ZESCO Limited. We acted as the interface, on behalf of corporate management, to various stakeholders, including lenders; contractors, and government through the line ministry on the periodic status update of the project.

It was successfully commissioned in February, 2016.

3. Kafue Gorge Lower Hydroelectric Power Project (KGLHEPP): US$ 2.3 billion, 750 MW - January 2010

I was seconded by ZESCO Limited to this 100% subsidiary project company as the first Finance and Accounting Manager. This appointment, as a key member of the project team, entailed intimate interaction with various lenders (principally from the People's Republic of China); transaction advisers from various parts of the world including the United Kingdom; Singapore and the PRC. Our team was responsible for setting up the organization for the project's development, as well as the initial civil engineering works. We also had the responsibility for the relocation of the Project Affected People, PAP, from the project site.

The Project entered commercial operation in March, 2021.

• Customer Base Growth - under my leadership as Director, ZESCO was able to break through the 1,000, 000 customer base growth on the retail/distribution side of its business.

• Revenue enhancement and control - We successfully rolled out the pre-payment project for distribution customers which now has a participation rate of 99.9 %. It is a benchmark performance index that has brought about interest from many other power utilities as to how it was so successfully done.

• Enhancing employee productivity through keeping headcount flat, whilst introducing new sales and payment channels. As our e-business has become more widely spread in our business, we have also reduced our investment in fixed infrastructure, such as customer service centers.

• As alluded to above, I have been involved in two flagship projects, Kafue Gorge Lower and Itezhi-Tezhi, in the face of funding and contractor challenges. As a result, Zambia has now essentially achieved energy security.

1. Fellow of The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants - ACCA (FCCA).

2. Fellow of the Zambia Institute of Chartered Accountants (FZICA).

3. Member of the Institute of Directors of Zambia

• Strategic Innovation, ACCA/Graduate School of Business (GSB) - Columbia University - January to June 2021.
• Various management development programmes, including in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - Dubai; University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University - Republic of South Africa; Development Bank of Southern Africa - DBSA.

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