The Kariba Dam in Zambia has always been a steady and seemingly endless source of something rare in Africa: electricity so cheap and plentiful that Zambia could export some to its neighbours. It was like this in spite of the fact that the effects of climate change grew visible across this land. The structure is a hydroelectric dam in the Kariba Gorge of the Zambezi river basin between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It stands 128 metres (420 feet) tall and 579 metres (1,900 feet) long and forms Lake Kariba which extends for 280 kilometres (170 mi) and holds 185 cubic kilometres (150,000,000 acre feet) of water.
The power generated from this, one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams, in one of largest artificial lakes on the planet. It has contributed to Zambia's political stability and helped turn its economy into one of the fastest growing on the continent.
Today, as a severe drought magnified by climate change has cut water levels to record lows, the Kariba is generating so little power that blackouts have crippled the nation's already hurting businesses. After a decade of being heralded as a vanguard of African growth, Zambia is struggling to pay its civil servants. The country is currently reaching out to the World Monetary fund for assistance.
"The Kariba Dam was a pretty big eye-opener, sort of confirmation that, yes, there could be this problem of climate change," said David Kaluba, national coordinator of the government's Interim Climate Change Secretariat.1
Zambia's rapid decline shows how climate change threatens economic development across Africa. While the global drop in commodities prices has devastated Africa, drought and other weather patterns have also undermined some of the biggest economies across the continent from Nigeria in the west to Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa to South Africa at its bottom tip. Africa is expected to warm up faster than the global average the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts.
Despite an agreement reached in Paris in December, which committed nearly every country in the world to lower greenhouse gas emissions, it is far from clear how much money African nations will have to mitigate climate change. Zambia remains dependent on foreign assistance to manage climate change, and has been slow to plan for the consequences on its own. According to Danny Simatele, a climate change expert at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg what is going on in Zambia is pretty much what is going on in the rest of Africa.2
To many in Zambia, the power crisis has focused attention on climate change in a way that rising temperatures and irregular rainfall patterns had not. People across the nation now track Kariba's water level - it was 13 percent of capacity on a recent visit, up from 11 percent in January - as closely as they follow their favourite soccer clubs. At the J.S. Butchery in the capital Lusaka, the light had just come back on following an eight-hour blackout. Joe Mulenga, a 28-year-old butcher said he had first learned about climate change on television about a year ago. "Now it's here, we started experiencing it, it's real," he remarked. "I'm very worried."3
Projections for growth in Zambia, which averaged more than seven percent for the decade up to 2015, have been cut in half. Francis Ndilila , who leads the energy committee at the Zambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that climate change had had the direct "effect already of slowing down our economic development."
The problems at the dam stem from a weather pattern linked to El Niño that has brought the worst drought in decades to parts of Africa. As is often the case, farmers have been hit extremely hard. So have countries dependent on hydroelectricity like Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Malawi. In Zambia, hydropower accounts for 95 percent of their needs. Production at Kariba Dam, which usually generates more than 40 percent of the nation's power, has fallen to about a quarter of capacity.
On a recent morning, not a single drop came out of the dam's sluices. Rocky patches on the riverbed that feeds Lake Kariba lay exposed. The rains had come late to Zambia this season, and then only in small quantities, though recent strong rains to the north have given officials some hope.
"Once the inflow reaches us in a few weeks, we expect some fair rise, not much," said Pherry Mwiinga of the Zambezi River Authority.4
Between 1960 and 2003, Zambia's annual temperatures rose by 1.3 degrees Celsius and rainfall has decreased by 2.3 percent each decade. The rainy season has become shorter, marked by more frequent droughts. When rains fall, they do so with greater ferocity and tend to cause damaging floods.
African governments say that big investments are needed to build irrigation facilities, canals, and other climate-resilient infrastructure, in addition to developing renewable energy sources. Zambia's reliance on hydropower has compounded its problems. The price of copper, its main export fell because of decreasing demand from China. As the lack of rains led to low water levels, Zambia was forced to implement blackouts. As the blackouts increased production costs, mines laid off thousands of workers. In a country accustomed to a secure supply of power, the drought and resulting blackouts immediately affected businesses large and small.
For Good Time Steel in Lusaka, the nation's biggest steel maker, the power cuts meant losing a third of its production capacity. The company became unprofitable for the first time last year. Good Time Steel was established in Zambia a decade ago, part of a big wave of Chinese investments in Africa. At the time, Chinese businessmen did not weigh a government's response to climate change as part of their investment decision making, said Jacky Huang, the manager of Good Time Steel, which employs some 600 workers. Now, he said, "it's a factor we have to consider."5
There is good news on the horizon, however, in the shape of companies working to develop and install renewable energies such as wind and solar. With the kind of natural resources that Africa has to drive such technologies it should mean millions of people will one day enjoy a steady, cost effective flow of joy.
1 Norimitsu Onishi. "Drought May End an African Success," The New York Times International Weekly (April 24, 2016):
2 Ibid
3 Ibid
4 Ibid
5 Ibid
