The Terrible Toll Of Malawi’s Power Cuts
By Paul Homewood
Just before Christmas, the Guardian ran a piece which revealed the realities of living without a proper supply of electricity:
Rural health worker Patrick Kamzitu is relaxed about the long and frequent power cuts that plague Malawi and which last week almost brought it to a halt when the whole country went dark for two hours.
“Power cuts? We have no power cuts here. We hear of what is happening in the cities but we have no problem here because we don’t have any electricity to cut,” he says.
Nambuma, a small town 50km over dirt tracks north-west of the capital Lilongwe, was promised mains power by the government five years ago. But although there are new poles lying on the side of the road five miles away in Ngoni, the electricity has still not come.
Like almost 90% of Malawians, the 12,000 people living in the Nambuma area are resigned to never being able to switch on the lights.
But patience is wearing thin for the 10% of Malawian households that are connected to the grid and are supplied by the state-owned Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) or the private Electricity Generation Company.
Prices have risen sharply, and daily rationing and lengthy “outages” lasting from a few hours to several weeks, depending on where people live, are now the norm. A familiar sound in Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu, the country’s three urban centres, is of diesel generators kicking in as the lights flicker and go out.
People are long used to shrugging and accepting the cuts, but anger boiled over at last week’s national blackout. Irate MPs were forced to use their mobile phones to read in parliament, businesses complained about having to burn expensive diesel and there were threats of demonstrations.
Escom was forced to make a rare public apology, blaming the national blackout on a fault on the power line between two of the country’s largest hydroelectric plants.
“There are people’s lives concerned here. We have cases of premature babies dying in hospitals due to the absence of power for the incubators. This is unacceptable,” says Dorothy Ngoma, president of the National Organisation of Nurses and Midwives of Malawi.
The usual explanation for power cuts in December is that it’s the end of the dry season, when water levels in Lake Malawi and the Shire river, which together feed the country’s largest hydroelectricity plants, are at their lowest. In the past three weeks hydroelectric output has been halved, a figure worsened by the two-year drought brought on by El Niño, which has left lake levels at historically low levels.
New back-up diesel generators, hydro and solar plants are due to be installed shortly which should improve the situation in 2018, say the power companies, but they warn that people must be patient. “Malawi will continue to experience power cuts unless the country receives above normal rainfall for five consecutive years,” says Escom’s former CEO Evelyn Mwapasa.
But it will be decades before every household gets connected. Malawi has the capacity to generate just 300MW, which is little more than a single Scottish wind farm; and even without a creaking infrastructure its power companies cannot keep up with soaring demand from a fast growing population and fuel-hungry companies needing electricity for computers and manufacturing.
“The country faces a widening gap between electricity demand and supply, which is being exacerbated by urbanisation, economic development and population growth,” says John Taulo, deputy director of the Malawi industrial research and technology development centre in Blantyre.
Grid coverage is growing slowly but demand is doubling every 10 years or so. “[We are] faced with serious energy supply problems, including rising energy and electricity demand; insufficient power generation capacity; increasingly high oil import bills; lack of investment in new power generation units; high transmission and distribution costs, transmission losses; poor power quality and reliability,” he says.
No electricity means no development but also widespread environmental degradation, according to the UN development programme. Nearly 75% of Malawian households depend on charcoal and wood burning for cooking, and coal and fossil fuel imports have grown, it says.
Charcoal production is now big business, with people carrying it many miles to sell in cities. Aside from the indoor health impact of burning wood to cook, deforestation also leads to soil erosion, which, in a vicious circle, silts up the rivers and blocks the hydroelectricity plants.
The power cuts keep the country poor and hungry, says the World Bank, which calculates that electricity rationing loses Malawi up to 7% of its GDP a year. This is more than any other country in Africa. In comparison, Kenya, Niger, Madagascar and Benin all lose under 2%.
There is a strong link between human development and per capita electricity consumption, say researchers. Malawi has one of the world’s lowest electricity consumption levels and its human development index, of 0.418, is far below even the sub-Saharan regional average, ranking 170 out of 187 countries in the world.
Being the Guardian, the article went to explain that the real solution was to build lots of solar panels, (even though these would not work at night), and lots more hydro power, (even though these rely on adequate amounts of rainfall, all of the time).
[One particular aspect about hydro power, which the Guardian failed to report by the way, is that one major reason why river levels are low is that more water is being pumped away to urban areas.]
I actually would not dispute that there is a role for micro grids, using solar and wind, to provide power to villages that are already off grid and have to rely on generators or burning wood. Constructing a grid to such outlying areas would be immensely expensive, and solar power may be a much cheaper option, even though it would not provide reliable energy. After all, some electricity is better than none.
But the real issue is the provision of affordable and reliable power to the rapidly expanding urban and semi urban areas, which will be the key to growth of Malawi’s economy.
As the article points out, it is a vicious circle.
No reliable power = no development = = no economic growth = no money = no investment in the power grid.
Fortunately for Malawi, help may be at hand, as there are plans to build a 300MW coal power plant, which would not only double the country’s current capacity, but also be able to provide power day in day out, winter and summer, rain and drought.
The proposed plant at Kam’mwamba will be financed and built by China.
When the Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Chinese in 2015, Finance and Economic Development Minister, Goodall Gondwe said that Malawi was one of the poorest countries in the world and that a project of such magnitude would help to move it out of poverty.
Thoroughly worthwhile objectives, you might have thought.
Unfortunately for Malawi, not everybody agrees.
The World Bank has already set its stall out against any such developments of coal power in any country. Its policy regarding energy now revolves sustainable and modern energy and doubling the global share of renewable energy by 2030.
And more recently the UK Govt, who ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, have at the forefront of efforts to phase out coal power worldwide, regardless of the consequences.
Coal supplies for Kam’mwamba would be readily available, either from across the border in Mozambique, or from within Malawi itself.
Indeed, in 2013 the Malawi Govt set a target to increase the contribution of mining to 20% of Malawi’s GDP by 2023.
From an economic point of view, the project would make sense all way round for the region.
Despite outside pressures and delays, it appears that the project is going to go ahead. The US Dept of Commerce now states that the plant should be up and running in the next couple of years.
Perhaps Guardian writers, who continually demonise fossil fuels, should be made to live in Lilongwe for a year or two, and see what it is really like to live without a proper power supply.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Malawi could always engage the architects of South Australia’s power grid. They know all about blackouts.
But it’s disgraceful that Malawi, as a ‘developing nation’ under the UN Charter cannot share the same advantages of coal-fired generation of another ‘developing nation’, China.
It prompts one to ask of the green blobbers whether they consider this to be intended or unintended consequences.
I think Sir David Attenborough would smile at the “intended” consequences as he is in favor of killing off a lot of people–himself excepted.
“No reliable power = no development = no economic growth = no money = no investment in the power grid” >>> higher birth rates + higher poverty + higher demand.
This is a no-win argument to be having without addressing family planning issues in these developing economies.
Coming soon to a Britain near you.
These days lighting via solar isn’t so much of a problem. I know several people who, during renovation projects on rural French properties have used solar garden lights for domestic night time illumination. For about 10 months of the year these will provide dusk till dawn lighting, I expect that somewhere like Malawi would have 12 months dusk till dawn capability.
Heating and cooking would be more problematical but not insurmountable and hot water can be produced fairly easily using basic solar technology.
None of it has to be hugely expensive, just crying out for sensible people to do sensible things.
As Rush Limbaugh has often pointed out, the problem is not the unequal distribution of wealth, it is the unequal distribution of capitalism.
Not allowing the building of power plants which use cheap and plentiful coal should be considered criminal and treated as such. If ever we had a clear case of “crime against humanity,” this is it.
If you want to see crimes against humanity you should try living in Malawi for 23 years ( I have !!! ), the level of corruption is unbelievable, the whole government from the civil service all the way to the president himself .
2/3 of Malawi has lots of mountains, this is prime land for wind turbines,100 wind turbines
costing £300 million would easily double the maximum power that they produce and this can be done in less than a year, the leaders of a country of 18 million people can’t secure a £300 million investment ????
From the start I had this feeling that the Chinese would be there to help build a coal power station – and add Malawi to their growing empire of influence – and so it proved reading further on.
Searching the interweb for data on Malawi access to electricity, I got numbers ranging from 7% to 11.9%.
Which tells me no one really knows how many people have electricity in Malawi. The electric company probably knows how many meters it has. It probably knows how many bills it sends out. Any numbers beyond that are made up.
Communism will fill the void in central Africa caused by the West’s posturing on weather. The Chinese don’t love the central Africans, the Chinese are looking for foreign bases. In a word, they are colonialists.
+Gamecock, colonialism is not bringing industry and technology to an undeveloped country. It is restricting the resulting economic opportunities to your fellow colonists. That’s why Malawi is the mess it is today. In British Commonwealth days, the colonists didn’t believe in spreading the wealth around. Skilled jobs were kept for people of European origin, even importing tradesmen rather than to train the locals.
Today Malawi is, like South Africa, a theftocracy, run for the benefit of senior politicians and their cronies. Even Putin never looted a country so thoroughly.
China doesn’t have a lot of boots, or sandals, on the ground in Malawi. It is building a power plant, ensuring its lines of supply, and creating goodwill. Naturally China will have paid substantial “consulting fees” to Malawian politicians for the honour of being awarded the contract. China is also taking a huge gamble that it will ever be paid for this.
I think you will find, oldfossil, that China will have secured the capital against some kind of mortgage on Malawian natural resources. They build railways in “developing nations” secured against the coal/iron ore mines at the end of the line and when the Nation defaults, take control of the mine (and port at the other end). They are not stupid or cavalier with their capital.
Theftocracy is a modest description on this subject maybe David Cameron’s ” incredibly corrupt ” might come closer !!!
Is it not a wonder that their leaders are always busy building their Palaces ( not mansions those are a bit small ) and driving around in their fleets of brand new expensive cars !!! The hospitals have no drugs or equipment and the infrastructure is in a terrible state , I lived in Malawi for 23 years and I saw every thing that happens there, fed up I emigrated !!!
In the UK when a street light stops working I email the council and it gets fixed within a week , the same with potholes , schools …….. In other words it’s all about the leadership you elect ! If you elect a thief or otherwise do you think that once he is in power he will soon turn into a saint , unfortunately this is how they think the world works in Malawi, it’s a harsh revelation but the truth like medicine is always bitter.
CHANGE THE ATTITUDE and you will see a different view of how the world works !!!
Why not try windmills. We have very strong winds in Malawi to power the windmills.
As noted by others, China is increasing its field of influence and securing its future resources in a similar manner to the European colonists a century ago. In Sudan they have control of much of the oil and there are Chinese towns controlling the projects and manning them. All the leaders get from this is a large pay-out. This is spreading to a country near you!
My experience of the developing world is that the wealthy have their private generators and fuel supplies, so are not too worried about electricity reliability. However, they need to placate the middle classes by improving things a bit to prevent revolutions.