Power cuts in Tanzania, a disaster?
By Deogratias M. Simba, Dar es Salaam
Tanzania, being a developing country, faces many challenges as it strives to climb up the ladder of development. The challenges are many. Some of these challenges were clearly defined during the first phase government under the late Father of the Nation Julius K. Nyerere. These were ignorance, disease and poverty. Now, forty-five years since Tanzania attained her political independence, the country seems to have attained not a single visible inch in edging out these three enemies, as they were called then, or rather challenges to development, now.
During the past four decades, there have been much talk about neo-colonialism. This as well has proved itself to be a strong and disastrous challenge to development for most of the developing countries. It has even, over time, changed its name into the so called ‘globalisation’. Through this phenomenon the developing countries have continued to witness mass intellectual drain into the developed world. Intellectuals, trained using hard earned money of the poor majority, keep shifting their intellectual capacities to rich countries, thus depriving poor countries of the necessary capital, in terms of technical know-how, skills, with which to try and reduce problems facing the young economies.
Since the last quarter of 2005, Tanzania has increasingly been facing acute power problems. The major source of this grave problem has been earmarked as being shortage of rainfall. This in turn has caused the major source of hydro-electricity in the country, the Mtera Dam, to receive little water that cannot fill it to the required standard capacity. This has greatly affected the amount of power that circulates in the national grid, as other sources of power do contribute very little electricity to the grid.
Many theories have been written and said in all spheres of life, political and economic, and yet things have proved to continue to get worse by each passing day. Hours of power rationing, mostly in residential areas, have been increased and cover from 7am to 7pm from Monday to the following Monday (Daily News, September 15th, 2006). We all agree that there is a problem here and the problem is not a small one. It is a grave problem. Industries also have not been left aside (Daiy News 16th, 2006).
Power is needed for many different uses. There are domestic uses, industrial uses, commerical uses and many others. Of major importance are those uses that make individuals earn a living and those that make the nation (government) to earn money to help it meet its daily requirements.
In this fifth decade since independence, Tanzania, like many other developing countries, still faces the problem of unemployment. With the opening of doors to the free economy, many small and medium sized enterprises have been offering formal and informal employment opportunities to quite a good number of Tanzanians, mostly in urban centres. Most of these small and medium sized businesses are located in residential areas. The reason for their being located there is clear. They cannot afford to rent offices and premises to operate in due to the high prices the industrial ones need. Moreover, almost all industrial areas have already been built up and those that are yet to be built up belong to some people who hold title deeds over them.
It is clear from the above explanation that all those who operate their commercial activities in residential areas are facing a very difficult time, currently. I liken the situation to one in which a rope is already on somebody’s neck ready to strangle him, and the person just holds the rope by its loop trying to ensure that it does not tighten on his neck. The results cannot be surprising that at one point this person might get tired and let go of his protests. He will then end up being strangled by the rope loop.
The middle class, size of which is very important in deciding the state of the country’s economy, that has been in the making is slowly but systematically being reduced by power cuts and power rationing. Their businesses are dying. With the death of their businesses, they too will end up dying. If they have to survive, they might have to resort to commit things that would be against the law, they would be committing crimes. So, power cuts lead to increase of criminal incidents.
The general condition in the country now is pathetic. There are countless entrepreneurs who would be thrown out of business by this trend. It is very unfortunate that the situation is not an easy one as the future remains promiseless. It is about four months ago when we received the last rains of the major rain season in the country. These rains were hoped to have come to solve the problem for a long time to come. However, the rains seem to have been of very little help. Only four months later things are back to were they were just before the rain season began. Counting months ahead of us before we get back to another major rain season, we have close to eight months!
And, there are those who have argued that the point here has not been lack of rain water to feed the dam, but rather the problem of silting. The government has not said anything about this problem, even though it is only logical and natural that the dam should be filled with silt due to the natural process of erosion that goes-on on the upstream side of the dam. It is said that the process of removing the silt will cost the nation a lot of money close to constructing a new dam of the same size as that of Mtera.
What I want to say here is that the problem of little and unreliable electricity in the country is here to stay for a very long time. Small businesses such as men’s and women’s salons; secretarial bureaux; hospitals that are to preserve their medicines in refrigerators; TV, radio and other electric appliances repairers; welding and soldering activities; butchers; sellers of electric goods and appliances and a lot more will have to close down their services.
Readers will agree with me that most of these businesses cannot be run during the night when there is power. Who is ready to let his wife go to a salon in Magomeni from Tandika at say 9pm? Which trader is ready to open is store that sells electric appliances along Uhuru Street at 10pm? Which buyers will he get while they come from such locations as Kinyerezi on the outskirts of Dar? The answer for these and many other questions would most probably be no, no and no.
It is time, it is time the government, our government acknowledges that there is a problem. We should stop these circumventing that we have been practising. Let’s be straight and say that we have a problem here, the problem of reliable sources of electricity. We should also acknowledge the fact that the country has no much funds within its reach to work out for long lasting solutions to this problem. It is time we, through our government, tell the international community that we in Tanzania are dying of lack of electricity, just like those people who died in Indonesia and other Asian countries of the unforgettable tragedy of Tsunami. We should tell them that if we die and they don’t intervene, they would also be responsible for not coming in to rescue us.
We should declare that the country is in a state of emergency and has been hit by a disaster, a disaster of the same scale as the famine that did once hit Ethiopia in the 1980s, like floods that have hit different parts of the globe, the US included, by Katrina. The diplomatic corps who are in the country should take this message to their fellow countrymen that they need to intervene immediately.
They should come and help the country find and construct new sources of electricity; windmills, coal, gas, solar energy and many others. All of these are abundantly available in the country. What is needed is just to inject some dollars and technical know-how and these would immediately start producing electricity. We need this power for ourselves and for export to our neighbours who might have less potential sources of power.
I think that even if the Thai rain makers do make their appearance in the country here, they would only partly solve the problem temporarily, and may be at expenses that we would better spend in searching for new sources of power. It will be just a few months after they are gone that we plunge back into darkness.
The only best thing to do right now is to sincerely acknowledge that we are having power problems, and that these problems are going to lead into even graver moral, economic, political and social problems. The three enemies announced some decades ago would remain strong and will continue to crunch the lives of commoners. And if we are to consider the question of globalisation, then this will continue to drain the brains and natural resources endowed to the country, because the economy of the country will remain weak, and therefore we will never be able to pay descent salaries to doctors, lawyers, engineers and all other professionals. Thus the purchasing power of the people will continue to fall and products of commoners like myself will be purchased at extremely low prices that we will end up being slaves in our own country. Another question to ask ourselves is if this situation is in anyway inviting to prospective investors.
Power unreliability in Tanzania is a disaster just like any other major disaster that deserves the attention of the international community. It is time to find out which country is a true friend of Tanzania at this moment.
Deogratias Simba
Dar es Salaam.
simbadeo2000@yahoo.co.uk
This is a question directed to all: policy and decision makers, academicians, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs (small and big); students; farmers and peasants; hawkers; the unemployed – all (both living in Tanzania and those in diaspora).
