Zambia has been in a power deficit for some years now. The current loadshedding being experienced is an old story. Perhaps what is new is the intensity, or hours of no power. The deficits are following the rainfall cycles, such that years of poor rainfall are followed by years of loadshedding. For this reason, some have blamed the loadshedding on the act of nature, calling for divine intervention as the only way out of the problem. It is the low rainfall that has caused the loadshedding, and therefore, we should not blame anyone. The government of today is also absolved, for there is nothing they can do from a scientific point of view to avert the crisis. This is not a crisis that can be completely solved in a few years. So here is the genesis of it.

Electricity generation in Zambia begun in the colonial years. The primary purpose then was to supply electricity to the mines as population pressure was low and there wasn’t a great need for it elsewhere. The governments of those years made investments in electricity generation stations after projecting the demand for electricity. Supply continued to increase in response to growing demand, eventually establishing the Kariba dam (for both Zambia and Zimbabwe) and the Kafue gorge (upper) power stations. These were substantial expansions, increasing Zambia’s installed capacity by roughly 1500 MW altogether over a space of few years. The Kariba project was done during the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, while the Kafue (upper) was done in the first 8 years of independence. Since then, there has not been any major breakthrough, save for upgrades and the redesigning of the Itezhi-tezhi, all of which have not been adding much. May be the addition of Kafue gorge lower is quite commendable. All in all, the country has not made investments in electricity generation that are commensurate with the changes on the demand side. It also seems the country did better in the past, than now. To show this, the installed capacity by 1972 was around 1600 MW. Today, 52 years later, we have only managed to raise capacity to 3350 MW. This is like adding about 1750 MW over 52 years, while the old guys added 1600 in a space of 17 years, under more difficult circumstances, owing to primitive technologies compared to what is available now.

At the same time, the demand for electricity was known to grow without limit. The population was growing, as was the mining and industrial needs. Reports documenting these projections have been there since time immemorial. All these were pointing to increased power demand in the future. Instead of making breakthrough investments, successive governments only attended to short-term needs and sporadic extensions and renovations to existing generation. So why did we focus on short-term, small investments, which clearly have failed the country?

I think there are two main reasons why the country has only made short-term, minor investments. There are many reasons and I cannot claim to know all. First, there is the distraction caused by unending crises. The food issues have befallen the country for many decades now, with food riots beginning right in the Kaunda era. The country has been having food crises in a cyclical manner, recurring every few years. It is happening again in 2024. It was there in 2019. In such a crisis, attention and resources are shifted from long-term projects in order to attend to pressing immediate needs. While we need to focus on the long term, a government cannot afford to ignore the short-term because survival now is a prerequisite to getting into that future. These crises are exacerbated by our continued reliance on rainfall for agriculture, the source of livelihood for more than half of the country’s population. The failure to move away from rain dependence is flirting with food crises.

The other reason is the nature of our governance system which has five-year life spans. A government has five years to invest and show results in order to seek re-election. Under normal circumstances, a government can show case both finished products (schools, health centers, roads constructed) and work-in-progress on mega projects that require more than 5 years, such as power plants. Unfortunately, the Zambian population does not put much value on work-in-progress. Moreover, the next government may even underplay the investment or claim kudos on commissioning. This has an effect of pushing our policy makers towards short projects, which seem to sit well with voters. Long term projects are not saleable to a Zambian voter. This has deprived us of strategic and critical investment.

In both situations, poor leadership will give in and favour band-aid fixes that merely address the immediate issue at hand and do little to stop it from happening again. By taking this course of action, the nation will almost certainly experience ongoing issues and transition from one crisis to the next. To create long-term strategic investments, the country needs courageous and focused leadership that strike a balance between politically attractive short life investments and long-term investments. This is what supposedly developed nations accomplished. They made projections on what would be required by gazing into the future and worked towards that. Although rivers found in many developed nations are not as mighty as the Zambezi and Kafue, do you wonder why load shedding is no-existent?

The lack of strategic planning and investment has also locked the country to hydropower, which is increasingly becoming unreliable due to climate change or variability. Projections on the reduction of rainfall in the future is well documented. Experts have projected that rainfall will continue on a downward trend into the foreseeable future. This means the Kariba will never be its old self. So do we blame nature? The Lord Jesus, in Matthews 7:26–27, makes reference to a person who builds a house without a foundation. The flood hit, and the house fell at once. Since the house fell by flood, can the builder blame nature? The answer is biblical; the builder was foolish. By design, the house was vulnerable to nature, and it should not be surprising that nature brought it down.

Zambia’s electricity supply is mostly hydro, which is highly susceptible to climatic variation. Of the total installed capacity, 83% is hydro, which has to depend on rainfall or nature. This is too many eggs to leave in a turbulent basket. Our electricity generation is designed to heavily depend on nature. And when nature strikes, the whole country is in disarray, with power shortages that are having a ripple effect, affecting every sector of the economy. At the moment, available information is suggesting that generation at Kafue Upper is down to 35% of capacity, while Kariba is down to 12%. The problem here is not nature. It is the failure to recognise the nature of nature and the failure to diversify and expand generation over many decades. This is a crisis we have been brewing for the many years we have failed to make major investments in power generation. Therefore, we are closer to the foolish builder that Jesus referred to. The energy crisis and loadshedding are therefore man-made and unjustifiable. How come other countries, especially outside Africa, are not experiencing loadshedding despite being subject to the same nature or extreme weather conditions?

With this crisis at hand, the focus on immediate needs may derail some futuristic interventions. In whatever case, long term interventions will be done under difficult circumstances, and it takes a focused and determined commander. In village life, you only go to work in your field, producing crops for next year, if there is mealie meal at home. When there is no mealie meal, then the entire family goes to work in another person’s field as piecework. The consequence is that such a family may not have maize come next year because they abandoned their fields, working in others for immediate needs. This is a vicious cycle of poverty we are trapped in.

As a country, we need to tread carefully, balancing our focus on both immediate and future needs. Short-term interventions are necessary for survival, while long-term interventions lead to prosperity. But you cannot prosper if you don’t survive in the first place. At the same time, there is a need to graduate from a survival mode to a developmental mode. While making adjustments to address immediate needs, the government should not lose focus on the bigger picture. I say this knowing that it is difficult to promise a new Jerusalem to someone struggling to see the current one. As the country will be celebrating the Diamond Jubilee, there is a need to take stock of what we have achieved and how we are building for the future, not how we have survived.

The country may also need to invest in citizen enlightenment to inculcate investment mindset for the future generation, including what to look for from the leaders we elect: handouts or education opportunities; tantameni or market opportunities, among others. It is commendable that education is now free, but there is a need to work towards making it compulsory. Education is not only about skill development, but also encompasses enlightenment, which is necessary to support other systems, including our democracy.

Dr Ndhlovu is a visiting Researcher at Charles University in Prague. Comments are welcome to [email protected]