Zim tycoon Ken Sharpe's WestProp installs 1MW solar plant at Millennium Heights in push to take Harare estates off the national grid

WestProp Holdings, the Zimbabwe developer behind the Millennium Heights apartment complex in Harare's Borrowdale West suburb, has installed a 1-megawatt solar plant covering its 54-bay car park as part of a stated push to take all of its developments entirely off Zimbabwe's strained national electricity grid.

The installation, commissioned in the first week of June 2026, converts what was previously a standard parking facility into a canopy of solar panels that now generates renewable energy for the apartments above and around it. Additional parking bays on upcoming apartment blocks within the estate will receive the same solar covering, expanding the total generating capacity as each phase of the 1,000-unit development is completed.

WestProp chief executive Ken Sharpe said the car park installation was consistent with the company's founding commitment to green energy infrastructure across all of its projects. "By harnessing the sun, we demonstrate our commitment to environmental stewardship. The solar plant provides shade and comfort while generating renewable energy that cuts reliance on fossil fuels," Sharpe said in a statement. He added: "Sustainability is our guiding principle. From gas reticulation to solar integration, we embed eco-friendly solutions into every development."

The energy strategy at Millennium Heights is part of a broader infrastructure architecture that WestProp has built into the estate from the ground up. The complex already features reticulated gas supplied to all units with underground bulk gas storage, backup water systems, high-speed fibre internet and KONE lifts imported from Germany in its completed blocks. Solar power now runs the estate's advanced security systems, common area lighting and residential apartment supply on an uninterrupted basis, bypassing the load-shedding and grid instability that has been a persistent constraint for Harare's property market.

WestProp listed on Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls Stock Exchange in April 2023, the first property development company to trade on the dollar-denominated bourse. The VFEX listing was designed to give the company access to foreign currency-denominated capital and attract diaspora and international investors seeking dollar returns in Zimbabwe's real estate market.

Millennium Heights has become one of the fastest-selling development projects in Zimbabwe's history. Of the 1,000 apartments planned across multiple blocks, 366 had already been sold as of mid-May 2026, with Block 6, comprising 65 units, selling out entirely before construction began. Block 7, with 41 units, was attracting a new surge of buyers. WestProp says sales momentum is running ahead of the construction timeline at every stage of the project, driven primarily by investors purchasing units as Airbnb income-generating assets rather than primary residences.

Sharpe, who dropped out of school in the United Kingdom at 18 and returned to Zimbabwe to start a consumer goods distribution business under West Group in 1991, pivoted into property nearly two decades later. He co-founded WestProp with Ukrainian businessman Oleksandr Sheremet in 2006. The company now oversees a portfolio of interconnected developments in Harare's northern suburbs spanning Millennium Heights, the Pokugara residential estate, the forthcoming Mall of Zimbabwe, The Hives and the Hills Luxury Lifestyle Golf Estate in Warren Park. Sharpe has set a publicly stated goal of laying one billion bricks in Zimbabwe by 2050, a target he describes as central to the country's effort to reach middle-income status.

The solar car park at Millennium Heights is a detail in that larger picture but an instructive one. In a country where unreliable power supply has historically been one of the primary deterrents to high-density residential development, WestProp's off-grid energy strategy has become a practical selling point as much as a philosophical commitment. Buyers can plan their lives around guaranteed power supply regardless of what the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority delivers to the grid outside the estate's perimeter.