Despite having the mighty Zambezi River and the massive hydro-powered Kariba Dam, Zambia is currently experiencing the worst electricity outages in living memory.
The crisis is so severe that cities and towns across the country sometimes go without electricity for three days at a time, with people considering themselves lucky when the lights come on for an hour or two.
The power outage is a shock to the 43% of Zambians who are connected to the grid and have taken electricity for granted all their lives.
But one of the worst droughts in decades – caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon – has decimated Zambia’s power generation capacity.
These days I sometimes go to bars and restaurants to find people not eating or drinking – they are just there to charge their phones amid the pounding sound of generators.
There is also a booming business where people make money by charging people’s phones without electricity.
Zambia gets up to 84% of its electricity from water reservoirs such as lakes and rivers, while only 13% comes from coal.
The contributions of solar energy, diesel and heavy fuel oil are even lower, accounting for 3%.
For weeks, the crisis was exacerbated by the country’s only coal-fired power plant, Maamba Energy, not operating at maximum capacity as routine maintenance work took place.
There was finally some good news on Wednesday when Energy Minister Makozo Chikote said the plant was now fully operational and Zambians would have at least three hours of electricity a day.
President Hakainde Hichilema declared the drought a national disaster in February, but the government has failed to resolve the energy crisis as Zambia relies heavily on the Kariba Dam for its electricity.
A financial crisis also severely limited the government’s ability to import power as suppliers wanted payment up front, although a spokesman for state energy company Zesco, Matongo Maumbi, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast that electricity was being imported from Mozambique and South Africa to ease the crisis, especially in the mining sector – Zambia’s top export earner and source of foreign exchange.
Located on the Zambezi, Africa’s fourth longest river, Kariba was built in the 1950s and is the reservoir for the country’s largest underground power station, the Kariba North Bank Power Station. A power station on the other bank serves Zimbabwe.
But due to the drought that has caused parts of the river to dry up, only one of Zambia’s six turbines is in operation, resulting in the generation of a paltry 7% of the 1,080 MW installed in Kariba .
The dam holds the water of the Zambezi with a curved wall that is 128 meters high, 579 meters long and 21 meters thick.
Engineer Cephas Museba – who has worked for state energy company Zesco for 19 years – says he has never seen the water level in Kariba so low.
“I think we didn’t get any rain since February. It would rain until April. If we compare the history of this basin, this is the lowest we have received,” he told me.
It has created an electricity crisis that is being felt in every business and home.
Some companies are opening for less time and cutting back on staff.
It can even be difficult to find bread; bakeries make fewer loaves because they find it too expensive to keep generators running.
Fortunately, the government has installed huge generators in some markets, government offices and hospitals, although stories of how kidney patients are struggling to cope are still being shared on social media.
Some patients need to be hooked up to a dialysis machine for up to three hours a day, but power is not restored until about an hour or two later, sometimes after midnight.
Other times there is no electricity at all for 72 hours straight.
On those days I wear the same clothes as the day before, instead of a washed but wrinkled shirt that has not been ironed.
Life has become more difficult for everyone.
Recently I woke up one day and was greeted by a foul smell as blood flowed under the refrigerator.
All the meat we bought was gone and we had to give it to our German Shepherd dog, the happiest member of our household these days.
Recently I bought a candy at a grocery store, but when I opened the package at the dining room table, I realized it was more food for our dog.
My food budget, which was already tight due to the cost of living, is now even tighter. Buying perishable items in bulk at a lower price is totally out of the question as they will simply rot.
The government is encouraging homes and businesses to switch to solar energy and has removed import taxes on solar energy to make it cheaper to purchase.
But some people say their solar panels don’t generate enough electricity when there’s little sunlight – and they can’t afford to install more panels. Most Zambians cannot afford solar panels at all.
Now many families have resorted to boiling and heating water on portable gas stoves, but shops are also running out of gas due to the high demand.
So out of desperation and because it is cheaper, they buy charcoal for cooking and heating water – despite the negative impact on the environment and the climate.
The electricity crisis has also affected the wells that middle-class families have dug in their properties.
Because boreholes work with electricity and solar-powered pumps, homes now also have no constant water supply, making it impossible to even flush the toilet.
In some schools, children are being advised to drink five liters of water every day to reduce the risk of a sanitation crisis – and outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera. that hit the country early this year.
Many families are now filling buckets – or bathtubs – with water, hoping it will stay that way until the lights are back on and the toilets can be flushed.
All this has left Zambians frustrated and angry. They point out that the power outages demonstrate the failure of successive governments to plan ahead – something President Hichilema’s government has now pledged to do.
Mr Maumbi said Zesco is investing in more energy sources, including solar power plants, to reduce its dependence on hydropower to about 60%.
But Zambia’s focus is not just on green energy; coal is also in the mix.
In July, the energy regulator approved plans to build only the country’s second coal-fired power station.
It is the dirtiest fossil fuel, producing the most greenhouse gases when burned, but the government believes that to avoid a similar crisis in the future it has little choice but to continue.
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