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.
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...
