• Eskom supplied electricity for 231 consecutive days in 2025 without load shedding.
• Improved maintenance lifted energy availability to 69.1% in December 2025.
• Eskom expects about 16 billion rand in net profit by March 2026.

Eskom said on Friday, January 2, that it supplied electricity without interruption for 231 consecutive days in 2025. Although this performance fell short of the 282-day stretch recorded in 2024, it confirmed a steady improvement after 2023, when nearly 300 days of load shedding weighed heavily on Africa’s most industrialised economy.

Eskom management described the worst of the crisis as largely behind the company. In a statement, Eskom said it recorded only 26 hours of planned power cuts in April and May.

More broadly, the utility attributed the improvement to better maintenance of its power plants. Eskom said these efforts lifted the energy availability factor to 69.1% in December 2025, up from 56.6% a year earlier.

The company has implemented an operational recovery plan in recent years to restore generation capacity and cut diesel spending, and Eskom said the strategy has started to deliver results.

In a statement published on November 28, 2025, Eskom said it expects net profit after tax of about 16 billion rand ($971 million) by the end of its financial year in March 2026, broadly in line with the previous year.

The utility posted net profit of 24.3 billion rand ($1.47 billion) in the first half of the financial year, supported by lower finance costs, reduced debt levels and average electricity tariff increases.

Once viewed as a drag on investor confidence, Eskom contributed last year to an upgrade of South Africa’s long-term foreign-currency sovereign credit rating to BB from BB-, the country’s first such improvement in two decades.

This article was initially published in French by Espoir Olodo

Adapted in English by Ange Jason Quenum