The sell-off of Zambia’s mines has created an energy crisis

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/11/zambia-mines-energy-crisis-power

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Zambia is in the middle of a massive power crisis that began in June and has been getting steadily worse. In Lusaka, where I live, the situation is becoming desperate due to eight-hour blackouts every day. Moreover, the electricity goes off just at the time it is most needed – when families come home from work. The entire family is left without electricity for lighting and for cooking the evening meal. So instead it means cooking on the mbaula (a simple charcoal fire) and eating by candlelight.

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You might think this only affects the more well-off, since for the two-thirds of Lusaka residents not connected the electricity grid, mbaula and candles are the norm. But almost everyone is affected by the severe water shortage caused by Lusaka Water and Sewerage company not having enough electricity for its supply, raising fears of cholera due to lack of water for toilets and general hygiene.

Zambia is not Nigeria, where lack of a public supply of electricity is the norm, and where the well-off have long had their own generators. Zambia is one of the wettest countries in the world, and almost all its electricity comes from the huge power stations at the Kariba Dam and Kafue Gorge. Zambia is used to plenty of electricity, even selling its surplus to neighbouring countries.

Despite the doubling of the population since 1970, there has not been a commensurate increase in generation capacity

So what has happened? According to the government, which owns the Zambian Electricity Corporation (Zesco), the shortage is simply a result of the poor rainy season of 2014-15, when rainfall was about 50% below average, leaving insufficient water in dams for the normal electricity supply. The drought has affected the entire southern African region, and is therefore beyond any government remedy.

But if you ask ordinary Zambians in a Lusaka bar or minibus, or the opposition party UPND, you will hear a very different story. They will say that the real problem is that government has been doing too little to develop new power stations as demand has risen.

The indictment of the government is very telling. The Kariba power station was built in colonial times in 1956 and Kafue Gorge power station in 1970. Despite the doubling of the population since 1970, there has not been an equivalent increase in generation capacity. And incredibly, even when the dam water levels were already low, the government continued to sell electricity to Mozambique and South Africa.

But the worst aspect of the crisis is that Zambia’s copper mines are the country’s main consumers of electricity, which is used both to haul ore out of the ground and for extracting copper by electrolysis. The copper mines need about 70% of Zesco’s maximum generating capacity, with only about 20% going to domestic consumers.

The root of the current power crisis can be traced back to the period between 2001 and 2008, when the state’s mines were sold off to foreign investors. Not only did government sell off the rundown mines for a song, but as a sweetener they even promised the buyers cheap electricity – subsidised by both the domestic consumer and the government. Hence there is no money for new power stations : no new capital has been generated to make use of Zambia’s huge surplus of water power, which instead runs unutilised into the sea.

When electricity began to run short last year, blackouts were inflicted on domestic consumers but not on the mines. But this year the shortfall of electrical power is about 25%, meaning that if it was inflicted entirely on domestic consumers they would have no electricity at all. Now, finally, the government has had to cut the copper mines’ supply.

In this sad story we see a textbook case of how to invent a power crisis. We see a long story of bad planning, or no planning. More than that, we see an absence of planning in the very area of development that is crucial for continuing and increasing production from the copper mines – the goose that lays the golden egg for this country. That, by any standards, is a massive folly.