{"id":7462,"date":"2020-01-15T08:13:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T05:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=7462"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:47","slug":"how-politics-and-poverty-affect-electricity-provision-in-zimbabwe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/01\/15\/how-politics-and-poverty-affect-electricity-provision-in-zimbabwe\/","title":{"rendered":"How Politics And Poverty Affect Electricity Provision In Zimbabwe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By<\/strong> <strong>Ellen Fungisai Chipango<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Zimbabwe\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2019\/08\/19\/752329758\/in-zimbabwe-an-economic-crisis-with-175-inflation-drives-discontent\">economic challenges<\/a>&nbsp;are numerous, but one of the most pressing is electricity scarcity. Around&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/data.worldbank.org\/indicator\/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS\">40%<\/a>&nbsp;of the country\u2019s population has access to electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The country has access to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/thebeammagazine\/the-untold-tragedies-of-coal-mining-in-zimbabwe-e6c185008d12\">vast and diverse<\/a>\u00a0possible energy resources. These include about 12 billion metric tonnes of coal, hydropower potential concentrated along the Zambezi River and untapped\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/0-www-sciencedirect-com.ujlink.uj.ac.za\/science\/article\/pii\/S0973082614000787?via%3Dihub\">solar power potential<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is not peculiar to Zimbabwe. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, only\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/esmapme.assyst-uc.com\/node\/71338\">16% <\/a>\u00a0of the population has access to electricity. Yet the country could meet much of the entire region\u2019s demand for electricity through the hydropower generation and diversification of renewable energy sources in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I conducted\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ingentaconnect.com\/content\/tpp\/jpsj\/pre-prints\/content-jpsjd1800061r3\">research<\/a>\u00a0to establish what the panacea could be for electricity scarcity in Zimbabwe. My conclusion was that the vaunted argument of increasing generation capacity is inadequate. This is because technological interventions don\u2019t address the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ingentaconnect.com\/content\/tpp\/jpsj\">distribution concerns<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My study shows that the supply view is only a partial response to the problem. Access to electricity is, in fact, dependent on socio-economic and political factors. As I argue in my study, the real problems getting in the way of access to electricity are social, political and economic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These structural factors reproduce electricity social scarcity, which in turn perpetuates social injustice. This is because electricity is essential for development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What this shows is that policy choices and affordability need to be addressed if the electricity shortage is to be resolved. <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-politics-and-poverty-affect-electricity-provision-in-zimbabwe-127755\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ellen Fungisai Chipango Zimbabwe\u2019s&nbsp;economic challenges&nbsp;are numerous, but one of the most pressing is electricity scarcity. Around&nbsp;40%&nbsp;of the country\u2019s population has access to electricity. The country has access to\u00a0vast and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}