The Southern African part of Africa is facing water shortages and Zimbabweans are subjected to 19 hours of power cuts per day as a result.
This comes as the Kariba Dam’s water levels have significantly dropped as it drives the country’s main hydropower plant.
BusinessTech Africa understands that the worst outages since 2019 are wreaking havoc in Zimbabwe and that has also affected neighbouring Zambia.
In Harare, most traffic lights are no longer working, and the power cuts are interrupting mobile phone services because batteries used to run base stations don’t have time to recharge.
The economy is also severely affected by these power cuts supermarkets, restaurants and some other businesses rely on generators to keep operating, but they are unable to run them perpetually for an extended period.
“Kariba generates almost half of our power needs, which is why a reduction in its generation capacity immediately registers throughout our economy and in our lives,” Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa wrote in his weekly column in state media on Sunday.
As the biggest man-made reservoir, Kariba’s level of usable water stood at 4.1% as of November 28 which is registered as a record low, according to the Zambezi River Authority.
Meanwhile, Zambia is expected to start rolling electricity blackouts from December 15 – that will last for six hours at a stretch and only affect residential areas, Energy Minister Peter Kapala said.
“The low water level situation in lake Kariba threatens the power generation from both the Kariba North Bank Hydropower station and Kariba South Bank Hydropower station,” he said.
“We anticipate that this will translate into a load management regime starting on the 15th of December, 2022 of up to six hours daily.”
Media reports through Al Jazeera indicate that in order to escape a total shutdown of the two power stations, the Zambezi River Authority has told Zimbabwe to cut generation to a maximum of 300 megawatts and Zambia to a maximum of 800 megawatts, he said.
