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00:00Southern Africa is suffering through the worst drought in a century and countries like Namibia,
00:05Zimbabwe, Zambia, the rising temperatures and lack of rain is worsened by the El Nino phenomenon
00:12and climate change. More than 68 million people are facing food insecurity and water shortages
00:18and the region which relies heavily on hydropower has also seen its supply of electricity hit hard.
00:25Hydroelectric dams provide more than 80% of Zambia's power but they have dried up.
00:30It declared a national emergency back in February and after months of blackout the government has
00:35recently only been able to guarantee about three hours of power a day in parts of the country.
00:41Now it's also removed VAT on some solar power products in the hopes of filling the gap.
00:47Diana Zulu works with the SolarAid charity and joins me now from Lusaka.
00:52Now Diana we'd hoped to get you envisioned for this interview but as we've just mentioned there
00:58power supplies can be a bit unpredictable so thank you very much for joining us on the phone.
01:0517 plus hours a day without power as far as you you're seeing it how are Zambians coping and what
01:11does this mean for their lives? Oh it's become very hard with time you can imagine what it's
01:18like to not have power uh initially the the official announcement is that we should have
01:24power consecutively for three hours but that's not happening like today we haven't had any so
01:30I have no electricity I'm in the dark I also have no water so it's it's very bad the impact
01:37obviously is very huge. Now solar sales have shot up do you think that that will last are there
01:46lessons to be learned here in terms of of the future energy mix that Zambia might try and
01:51cultivate off the back of this drought? Well SolarAid has been operating in Zambia for the
01:57past 15 years and our mission is has been to reduce energy poverty in the hardest to reach
02:05places which have no access to electricity but what we're experiencing now is that everybody
02:10has been affected from those in the rural areas and urban areas and so like you've mentioned
02:18our sales have shot up by 500 percent compared to this time last year and we're continuing to
02:26wanting to reach more people obviously we want to cover 100 percent of the population
02:31but for all of this to happen more funding is needed and obviously we need to be having
02:38discussions on a global level on what the future looks like as this has impacted sub-Saharan Africa
02:46so bad as witnessed by what we're experiencing right now. And have you had much support from
02:52the government in terms of promoting access to solar products? They're sort of promoting what
02:57is called the solar explosion in the meantime the immediate measures that they put in place
03:03is they have lifted all taxes and duties on solar related products when you're bringing
03:10them in the country but that's obviously tied to household use only. With regards to partnerships
03:17of course at SolarAid we are open to collaborating more with partners who are doing related works
03:24like we are. Support from the government other than the lift of the duties and that on
03:32the solar products that we import it hasn't gone beyond that but of course there is talk
03:38of doing more work as we have all heard that the Kariba Dam which is our main source of the
03:45hydro electricity that we have is most likely to shut down so the support is there it's just
03:51that maybe we were not very prepared for this but yes we have had received support.