Eskom, South Africa’s national power company, is in talks with the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, its private sector arm, about raising finance towards the R150bn ($19bn) it needs to borrow to stave off an electricity crisis.

The state-owned utility’s plans for a vast investment programme to bolster its perilously low generation capacity were dented this week when Moody’s, the credit rating agency, downgraded its opinion of Eskom’s creditworthiness – a decision likely to increase its borrowing costs and hamper its access to capital markets.