A joint venture between Japan's Marubeni and South Korea's Posco Energy has won an $800m contract to expand the Morupule B power plant in Botswana.

The project would expand the coal-fired plant’s capacity by an extra 300MW, from its existing capacity of 600MW.

The power generated would be sold to the Botswana Power Corporation under a 30-year power purchase deal at a cost of 812.56 pula per megawatt hour.

Construction work on the new plant is due to start in late 2016, with the first power generated added to the national grid by May 2020.

The project is expected to increase national power generation capacity to over 1,000MW from the existing capacity of 600MW.