Battered by financial crisis from over two years ago, it would be hoping against hope that the economy of Botswana would be in a position to weather yet another crisis induced by an energy shortage.
Yet, unless something really drastic intervenes, it seems like the country is headed for a debilitating power deficit somewhere in the margin of what we experienced in 2008, if not worse.
We realize that because of their scale and complexity, power plants take long to be planned before they are commissioned.
In that respect, authorities have for a greater part, their hands tied behind their backs.
This is not the time to be pointing fingers.
Rather it is the time to move together as a country without wasting any time so as to craft consensus on how best to save the country and economy from what threatens to be a total collapse.
As in almost everything else, Botswana has over the years relied on South Africa for energy supply.
But, going forward, the extent to which South Africa can continue providing a buffer and cushion for us is extremely limited.
South Africa has been a good partner.
By and large the country has remained true to their contractual obligations with Botswana under which they export close to 80 percent of our energy needs.
But South Africa has her own power problems.
As is to be expected other than that the contact under which they supply Botswana with electricity will be running to an end, South African authorities are under immense pressure to tend their backyard.
A recent document commissioned by the South African Government to assess the country’s energy needs has painted a picture that is not at all encouraging.
“From 2011 to 2016 rolling blackouts are anticipated unless extraordinary steps are taken to accelerate the realisation of the non-Eskom generation and energy-efficiency projects,” said the country’s Integrated Resource Plan 2010.
The report further highlights that Eskom’s current fleet would be hard pressed to sustain required performance levels, as there was not enough time to perform adequate maintenance and improve the quality of coal being supplied to a number of its power stations.
To put the South African document into context, this is the same Eskom that supplies close to 80 percent of Botswana’s electricity supply.
Thus, going forward, it will soon become politically untenable for South Africa to continue exporting electricity to Botswana, especially when their domestic deficit is getting bigger and bigger.
What this means for Botswana is that economic recovery is likely to be adversely affected.
Though somewhat fragile, there were signs that the economy was on route to recovery.
But that recovery is far from certain. If anything, it is fragile, slow and prone to hiccups.
Power shortage is an economic nuisance we can ill afford.
The Managing Director of Debswana is on record as saying that he has failed to extract guarantees from the energy suppliers that his company’s operations will not be disrupted.
As a result, he had to plough close to a billion Pula to build a power plant if only to mitigate the feared disruptions.
But how many companies in Botswana can afford that?
But not only is building such a plant very expensive, operating it, even if it’s only for a few hours, drastically destabilizes and compromises a company’s balance sheet because it uses diesel. It’s difficult to think of any company in Botswana, other than Debswana, that can operate such a facility.
As Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources so rightly points out in a story that we run elsewhere in this edition, a lack of certainty is likely to affect huge mining projects that would otherwise help expedite Botswana’s path to economic recovery.
We should be worried.
For now the catch lies in making sure that Morupule B meets the deadline, or better still, beats it!
