An emergency meeting of southern African energy meetings was held in Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana on February 21, to discuss the dire power situation in the region. In attendance were the ministers from member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which includes Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The ministers discussed ways in which they could most timely address the severe power shortage in the region which has increasingly resulted in power cuts, and threatens to undermine growth prospects for the member states.
The ministers agreed that “a radical approach and paradigm shift” was necessary and that several existing projects in the southern Africa power pool needed to be fast-tracked, and new projects planned.
Commenting on the situation, SADC executive secretary Tomaz Salomao said, “The current electricity supply demand balance … in the SADC region is precarious as evidenced by the recent frequent recurrence of brown-outs, black-outs and load-shedding in virtually all the countries of the SADC mainland, as well as in Madagascar.
South Africa, the largest consumer of electricity in the region, is trying to implement a number of projects to offset the shortage. It is exploring for fossil fuels offshore and internationally. It is looking to increase its nuclear power generation and implementing power saving measures. Most all of the SADC member states are also looking at alternative energy as to ease the situation, but most projects are still in the early stages of development and will not be brought online before 2010 at the earliest.