Our search for electricity availability in Africa has taken us to Uganda. The main player in this environment is Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL).
Uganda has quite a few hydro dams (which at first made me start smiling with pride). But upon further investigation, the shortfalls and deficiencies started surfacing its ugly head.
To start with, there is the Owen Falls (Nalubale) Dam near the city of Jinja; and then there is the Kiira Dam plus a few smaller ones.
The Nabulale and the Kiira together are supposed to be producing roughly 380 Megawatts of electricity, however, the amount coming from these two together amounts to ONLY 150 Megawatts (which is less than 50% capability). There is additional power being generated from thermal sources, but these have not helped the situation.
Load-shedding is ongoing. Without the load-shedding, ONLY about 10% of the total population of almost 31 million have access to electricity.
This is wishful thinking or a fools dream, but I had hoped that like her next door neighbor (Rwanda) the light would be a little brighter, but this is not the case.
There seem to be more hippos than cheetahs in this environment
Thursday, November 12, 2009
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