Zimbabweans experience 19 hours a day of power outages because there is not enough water in the Kariba dam to operate the country’s primary hydropower plant.
The largest outages since 2019 are wreaking havoc, causing traffic jams in Harare, the country’s capital, where the majority of traffic signals are no longer functional, and disrupting mobile phone services since base station batteries don’t have time to recharge. Supermarkets, restaurants, and several other businesses depend on generators to stay open, but they can’t keep them running nonstop for a long time.
In his weekly essay published in state media on Sunday, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa stated that “Kariba generates roughly half of our power demands, which is why a decline in its generation capability immediately registers throughout our economy and in our lives.”
According to the Zambezi River Authority, which oversees water supplies for the two southern African countries, the level of usable water in Kariba, the largest man-made reservoir in the world that is used by both Zambia and Zimbabwe, was 4.1% as of Nov. 28. This is a record low.
According to information on the Zimbabwe Power Company website, Zimbabwe has used up its allotment of water from Kariba this year and was only able to access 200 megawatts of the hydropower plant’s installed capacity on Monday.
The energy minister, Soda Zhemu, stated through email that “Kariba will not entirely shut down.” In order to help expand the grid’s capacity, the authorities intend to increase power imports from South Africa and Mozambique and ramp up output from their outdated coal-fired power stations in Hwange to at least 400MW.
According to Peter Kapala, the energy minister, rolling blackouts in Zambia will begin on December 15 and only affect residential areas, lasting six hours at a time.