Power woes blamed on poor maintenance

requirements in the country, according to the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA).
This is behind Botswana’s 45 percent, South Africa’s 76 percent and Mauritius’ 99,4 percent.
The low level of access to electricity in the country is largely due to higher than expected demand growth and power projects that have stalled at pre-feasibility stage.
This is revealed in a presentation by DBSA energy specialist Jean Madzongwe at the Zimbabwe Energy and Power Conference that was held last month.
Estimations by African Development Bank show that Zimbabwe requires around US$2 billion over the next 10 years for energy infrastructure refurbishment.
There have been very large reductions in the supply of power within Zimbabwe in the past decade.
The domestic generation has been reduced owing to lack of regular maintenance and imports have been cut back because of the inability of Zesa to settle its bills regularly.
Electricity is fundamental to Zimbabwe’s economic and social development, hence the persistent lack of adequate and reliable supply has resulted in significant losses to the economy. The fore-going trends in Zimbabwe’s electricity consumption underscore the extent to which lack of maintenance and rehabilitation in the past decade has eroded capacity of the power utilities to meet the demand for power.
The rehabilitation of the electric power network is widely seen as a high priority for the immediate future.
The remaining Southern African countries have even lower energy access ratings, with Malawi coming in with a mere 9 percent.