Malawi must once again do without power. The country was plunged into darkness on Saturday evening due to a major power outage affecting the entire territory, announced the national energy company (Escom).
“A system outage around 6 p.m. Saturday, June 18, 2022 caused a loss of electricity supply in the country. Efforts are being made to restore power as quickly as possible,” Escom said. Apologizing for the inconvenience, the public company recommended that its users turn off their electrical appliances “because the power could be restored sooner than expected”.
Three days without power at the end of January
Malawi has been experiencing massive blackouts for several months that can last up to eight hours. At the end of January, Malawians were even left without electricity for three days after the passage of tropical storm Ana, which killed dozens in southern Africa and damaged one of the country’s main power stations.
The new national cut on Saturday angered Internet users. “Let’s just admit that our country is poor and broke,” posted a resident on Facebook. “In other countries, ten minutes of power outage, the minister goes out to apologize to the people.”
Malawi is facing great economic difficulties and marred by numerous political scandals linked to corruption. Less than 15% of the population, which has more than 19 million inhabitants, has access to electricity, more than 90% of hydroelectric origin, according to the World Bank. More than half of the population lives below the poverty line.