By Ellen Fungisai Chipango
Zimbabwe’s economic challenges are numerous, but one of the most pressing is electricity scarcity. Around 40% of the country’s population has access to electricity.
The country has access to vast and diverse possible energy resources. These include about 12 billion metric tonnes of coal, hydropower potential concentrated along the Zambezi River and untapped solar power potential.
This is not peculiar to Zimbabwe. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, only 16% of the population has access to electricity. Yet the country could meet much of the entire region’s demand for electricity through the hydropower generation and diversification of renewable energy sources in the country.
I conducted research to establish what the panacea could be for electricity scarcity in Zimbabwe. My conclusion was that the vaunted argument of increasing generation capacity is inadequate. This is because technological interventions don’t address the distribution concerns.
My study shows that the supply view is only a partial response to the problem. Access to electricity is, in fact, dependent on socio-economic and political factors. As I argue in my study, the real problems getting in the way of access to electricity are social, political and economic.
These structural factors reproduce electricity social scarcity, which in turn perpetuates social injustice. This is because electricity is essential for development.
What this shows is that policy choices and affordability need to be addressed if the electricity shortage is to be resolved. Read more…
