Despite having the mighty Zambezi River and the massive hydro-powered Kariba Dam, Zambia is currently grappling with the worst electricity binformageouts in living memory.
The crisis is so cut offe that cities and towns apass the country are sometimes without electricity for three consecutive days, with people counting themselves blessed if the weightlesss come on for an hour or two.
The power cuts have come as a shock to the 43% of Zambians who are joined to the grid and have consentn electricity for granted all their inhabits.
But one of the cut offest drawts in decades – caengaged by the El Niño weather phenomenon – has decimated Zambia’s power-generation capacity.
Nowadays, I sometimes go to bars and restaurants to discover people not eating or drinking – they are there fair to indict their phones amid the pounding noise of generators.
There is also a booming business of people making money by charging the phones of those without power.
Zambia sources up to 84% of its electricity from water reservoirs such as lakes and rivers, while only 13% comes from coal.
Contributions from solar, diesel and weighty fuel oil are even drop, accounting for 3%.
For cut offal weeks, the crisis was compounded while the country’s only coal-fired power set upt, Maamba Energy, was not operating at peak capacity as it underwent routine maintenance toil.
On Wednesday, there was finassociate some excellent novels when Minister of Energy Makozo Chikote shelp the set upt was now brimmingy opereasonable, and Zambians would have at least three hours of electricity a day.
Pdwellnt Hakainde Hichilema declared the drawt a national catastrophe in February but the rulement has been unable to repair the energy crisis becaengage Zambia is heavily reliant on the Kariba Dam for its electricity.
A financial crunch also strictly recut offeed the rulement’s ability to present power as suppliers wanted payment upfront, though a spokesman for state-owned power utility Zesco, Matongo Maumbi, tbetter the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast that electricity was being presented from Mozambique and South Africa to ease the crisis, especiassociate in the mining industry – Zambia’s main ship achieveer and source of foreign currency.
Located on the Zambezi, the fourth-lengthyest river in Africa, Kariba was built in the 1950s and is the reservoir for the country’s bigst underground power station, Kariba North Bank Power Station. A power station on the other prohibitk serves Zimbabwe.
But becaengage of the drawt that has led to parts of the river parcheding up, only one of the six turbines at Zambia’s power station is operating, resulting in the generation of a paltry 7% of the 1,080 MW insloftyed at Kariba.
The dam retains the water of the Zambezi with a curving wall that is 128m (420ft) high, 579m (1,900ft) lengthy and 21m (69ft) heavy.
Engineer Cephas Mengageba – who has been toiling for the state-owned power utility Zesco for 19 years – says he has never seen water levels so low at Kariba.
“I skinnyk we stopped receiving the rains as punctual as February. It’s supposed to rain up to April. If we appraise the history of this basin, this is the lowest we have getd,” he tbetter me.
It has triggered an electricity crisis that is being felt in every business and home.
Some companies are uncovering for confinecessitateer hours, and retrenching staff.
It can even be difficult to discover bread – bakeries are making confinecessitateer loaves becaengage they discover it too pricey to persist generators running.
Fortunately, the rulement has insloftyed huge generators in some labelets, rulement offices and hospitals, though stories are still being spreadd on social media of how kidney fortolerateings are struggling to cope.
Some fortolerateings necessitate to be hooked up to a dialysis machine for up to three hours a day but power only gets repaird for about an hour or two, sometimes after midnight.
On other occasions, there is no electricity at all for 72 hours in a row.
On those days, I wear the same clothes as the previous day, rather than a washed but wrinkled shirt that has not been ironed.
Life has become more difficult for everyone.
One day recently, I woke up to be greeted by a foul smell as blood flowed from under the fridge.
All the meat we had bought had gone off and we had to give it to our German Shepherd dog, the happiest member of our hoengagehbetter these days.
The other day I bought relish from a superlabelet – but when I uncovered the package at the dinner table I genuineised that it was more food for our dog.
My food budget, already firm becaengage of the cost-of-living crisis, is now even firmer. Buying perishable items in bulk at a inexpensiveer price is endly out of the ask as they will fair rot.
The rulement has been encouraging homes and businesses to switch to solar, and has scrapped present taxes for solar supplyment to produce it inexpensiveer to buy.
But some people say their solar panels do not produce enough electricity when there is little sunweightless – and they cannot afford to inslofty more panels. Most Zambians cannot afford solar panels at all.
Now, many families have resorted to cooking and heating water on portable gas stoves – but shops have been running out of gas too becaengage of high need.
So in desperation and becaengage it is inexpensiveer, they buy charcoal to cook and heat water – despite its pessimistic impact on the environment and the climate.
The electricity crisis has also had an impact on the illogicalholes that middle-class families have dug on their properties.
As illogicalholes toil with electricity and solar-powered pumps, homes are now also without a constant provide of water, making it impossible to even flush the toilet.
In some schools, children are advised to consent five litres of water each day to shrink the possibility of a sanitation crisis – and the outshatter of waterborne diseases appreciate cholera, which hit the country at the begin of the year.
Many families now fill buckets – or bath tubs – with water, hoping it will last until the weightlesss are back, and toilets can be flushed.
All of this has left Zambians frustrated and mad. They point out that the binformageouts highweightless the fall shorture of successive rulements to set up ahead – someskinnyg that Pdwellnt Hichilema’s administration has now pledged to do.
Mr Maumbi shelp that Zesco was spreading in more energy sources, including solar set upts, so that dependency on hydro-power drops to around 60%.
But Zambia’s cgo in is not only on green energy – coal is also in the combine.
In July, the energy regulator upgraspd set ups to erect only the country’s second coal-fired power set upt.
It is the dirtiest fossil fuel, producing the most greenhoengage gases when burnt, but the rulement experiences that to shun a analogous crisis in the future, it has little chooseion but to press ahead.
