In this country, where less than 12% of the population has access to electricity, the lacy of reliable power supply is constantly cited as one of the key obstacles in doing business.
In addition, the country faces a widening gap between electricity demand and supply which is being exacerbated by urbanization, economic development, and population growth.
Electricity demand has been growing consistently at six to eight percent per annum. As a result, the existing system is greatly strained and the frequency of blackouts or brownouts is increasing, constraining industrial production and provision of socioeconomic services as well as deterring foreign investments.
Over the past decades, successive governments have endeavored to tackle Malawi’s energy deficit problems by maintaining a monopoly in power provision and pumping money into the poorly managed sector. All our governments have spent trillions on electricity, provision, but with little to show for it.
Understandably therefore, there have been a lot of suggestions that privatization could be an answer.
But in most African countries, like Nigeria for example, privatization has not exactly improved issues; especially because the new films usually have to rely on the same government-built transmission networks.
Asking private companies to build their own transmission networks would likely mean skyrocketing of electricity tariffs; possibly well beyond the reach of most Malawians.
Perhaps very significant investments should be directed towards energy production from fossil fuels such as coal and uranium, wich apparently we have in relative abundance in this country, as supplement to electricity.
Alternatively, focus could be turned to renewable energy sources such as biomass and solar power, which has been touted to have considerable potential to fill a lot of energy gap in the country.
Regardless of what the focus is, it is a fact that power supply could arguably be the single biggest risk to this economy.
Intermittent power supply already has negative impacts on industry and seriously hurts investors confidence.
No manufacturing company will come into this country without being guaranteed power supply.
Consequently, there can be a very credible argument that power supply should be much higher on the list of priorities for the government. However the fact is Malawi is so poor that food(and subsequently agriculture), effective health care, water supply, education and other livelihood and welfare issues are rated as more pressing problems than electricity.
This brings forth the very pertinent question of short term survival of long term sustainability? As a country we are always in survival mode. This is not particularly anyone’s fault though fingers logically be pointed towards past economic planners who presided over times of relative ‘plenty’.
But now, we have a nation which always faces food crisis unless there are heavy farm input subsidies, education and health care systems struggling to cope with unchecked population growth rates, all compounded by one third of our national budget ending up in pockets of greedy politicians and bureaucrats.
So, at all times, we find ourselves fighting for survival, with little or nothing to spare for investments into our future. But if we did manage to invest well we might just make it easier for future generations to survive.
Shouldn’t that be much more of a priority? increased investments in improving the power supply will almost automatically improve our economic levels, which will in turn lead to much more improved livelihoods.
The goal is the same just that the other route, though longer and rather more painful, will have much more sustainable results.
Source: The Nation_April 25 2022_By Cosmas Chigwe Jnr