Plans to expand power production

Swaziland is drawing up contingency plans to expand domestic electricity production to counter increasingly frequent power shortages. "Having a reliable source of electricity is essential for our rural electrification programme, which is tied to government's poverty eradication effort, delivery of essential services, and to foreign direct investment for industrial growth," said Hugh Magagula, principal secretary at the ministry of natural resources. Rolling blackouts in the capital, Mbabane, led to water shortages in several townships this week. The natural resources ministry denied reports that the South African parastatal energy conglomerate, ESKOM, would stop supplying electricity to Swaziland in 2007, but confirmed that the company would no longer be able to deliver additional power after that year because of rising demand at home. "ESKOM will honour its contract with Swaziland to supply power, but additional power - needed for our national growth - will not be available," Henry Shongwe, Swaziland's Senior Energy Officer, told IRIN. Swaziland receives 80 percent of its electricity from South Africa, with the remaining 20 percent coming from Mozambique via a 400 kV line that crosses the country from the capital, Maputo. Completion of the line in 2000 permitted the large-scale importation of electricity from its northern neighbour. Mozambique will honour its current contracts to supply power, but its domestic demand is also growing. Electricity generation has begun at a hydroelectric plant at Swaziland's Maguga dam, a joint venture with South Africa on the Komati river in the northwest of the country. The facility's maximum output of 19 megawatts is tiny in relation to the daily power consumption of 150 megawatts, and the output from the Maguga dam plant and a smaller waterfall-powered plant outside the capital, Mbabane, are used only during peak demand. "For base-load demand, we need to build our own big electricity plants - fortunately, Swaziland has an abundance of coal," said Shongwe. Coal is the only mineral exported by Swaziland, whose deposits of gold, tin and iron ore were depleted during the colonial era. In 2004 two mines produced over 600,000 tonnes of anthracite, worth around US $16.7 million, which was sold to South Africa. Shongwe said a coal-burning electricity plant could be operational within seven years, and would not affect coal exports or the country's estimated 20-year reserve of anthracite, or smokeless coal. "A different type of mineral, semi-anthracite, is used for steam generation of electricity ... it is available here if we re-open a mine closed in 1992. This would be a big boost to the mining sector," Shongwe pointed out. The coal belt, which runs eastward from central Swaziland towards the Mozambique border, is being surveyed for suitable sites for coal-burning electricity plants. Mindful of the country's environmental statutes, and the need to safeguard tourist attractions in the area, the natural resources ministry said any new installations would be equipped with technology to prevent air pollution. "We are looking at not only meeting domestic demand, but becoming an exporter of electricity. This would be a new industry for Swaziland," said Shongwe. Providing electricity in a poverty-stricken country is an uphill task. "I have been waiting for five years for electricity - now it is a matter of money," said Sonnyboy Mavuso, a small-scale farmer near Mananga, close to the northern border with South Africa. An electricity line, installed in 2002, passes over the cluster of mud huts where his extended family lives on the banks of the Komati river. "With electricity I can operate an irrigation pump to bring river water to my fields," he said. "Drought would no longer be a problem." Around 20 percent of rural households have access to electricity, but the Swaziland Electricity Board charges about US $585 to install electricity on rural farms like Mavuso's, which is more than he earned last year. The parastatal has offered to subsidise some indigent rural homeowners and farmers, but the natural resources ministry said it was awaiting clarification on the extent and availability of the subsidies.