Surbana assists in Zimbabwe's Solar City project

Singapore, 26 August 2014 – Surbana International Consultants Pte. Ltd. has been appointed by Zimbabwe’s Afrocentric Capital Private Limited, to provide its master planning expertise for the country’s Solar City project in the area of Juru. The Solar City is a first of its kind, and is conceived with the twin objective of creating a pioneering “green” city in not just Zimbabwe, but also Africa at large. It aims to provide low cost housings to mitigate the serious housing shortage especially for citizens with low to medium income, whilst providing sustainable energy solutions.

With an approximate 63 hectares in land space, Surbana’s master planning works will constitute housing, commercial, tourism and education clusters in the Solar City. In this two-stage, 16-week long project, Surbana will first come up with a master plan before providing more details at the later stage. It will also explore sustainable energy principles such as solar passive design that will help the city achieve a certain degree of energy independence. The Solar City aims to overcome its housing issues by providing green housing with off grid solar energy solutions. This will help to relieve the pressure for the need to rely on other forms of renewable energies.

Said Surbana’s CEO, Mr. Pang Yee Ean, “Our proposal will provide a framework for Solar City to build a sustainable city for the long term, bringing about benefits to the community, environment and the economy in the long term. We are very happy to be appointed and are heartened by the confidence that both Afrocentric Capital and the Zimbabwe government has put in Surbana. This is our first project with Zimbabwe and we look forward to more collaborations with them in the future as we help them to build long term capabilities in sustainable urbanisation."

The Solar City will see installations of various energy saving equipments, including bio-latrines, with possible generation of energy and fertiliser, and solar traffic lights.