Blackouts end in sight

Malawi’s persistent power crisis may ease by December with critical machine spares expected to arrive this week and imported electricity from Mozambique due to start flowing, The Nation has learnt.

In an exclusive interview on Friday on `No Excuses`, a new Nation Online programme that airs on Facebook and YouTube channels every Thursday at 7:30pm, Minister of Energy Jean Mathanga said that the long-awaited spare parts will finally land in the country to fix aging infrastructure that has hobbled national power generation.

The arrival of the machinery offers a glimmer of hope to millions of citizens and businesses currently grappling with severe and daily load-shedding.

The minister said the target is to stabilise the grid and ensure that Malawians experience a much more reliable power supply before the festive season this December.

“Let me assure Malawians that we are working round the clock so that issues of blackouts should end. We did not have adequate stocks of spares to [fix our machines] and now we are stocking up,” said Mathanga.

The intervention comes at a critical juncture with Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito expressing skepticism over the minister’s promises in an interview yesterday, urging consumers to brace for a prolonged energy crisis.

Malawi’s energy mix comprises 86 percent biomass, 10 percent petroleum, three percent electricity and one percent coal, according to the Ministry of Energy.

The composition of electricity generation capacity is equally skewed, with roughly 70 percent or 401 megawatts (MW) of the 564MW production capability sourced from hydro through Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) Limited, 51MW from diesel generators and 111MW from solar sources.

But according to an Egenco press release dated August 21 2026, the country’s major electricity producer is currently producing 370 MW.

Over 80 percent of the country’s electricity is generated through cascades along the Shire River, including major stations at Nkula, Tedzani and Kapichira.

While the grid has recently integrated limited solar photovoltaic capacity and battery storage systems, the lack of diversification leaves national supply highly vulnerable to both climate shocks and technical failures.

During the interview, Mathanga acknowledged this challenge.

She said: “We recognise that climate change means Malawi cannot continue relying overwhelmingly on hydropower without adequate diversification.

Compounding the problem, under the Malawi Rural Electrification Programme, government is adding more people to the grid with a diminishing generating base.

The immediate cause of the worsening blackouts is not one fault, but a cascade of breakdowns across Egenco’s aging infrastructure.

The crisis deepened on August 7 2026 when Nkula B Unit 6, a 20MW machine, developed a technical fault that pushed it offline.

According to Egenco, damaged generator bearing parts needed dismantling before their shipment to the original equipment manufacturer’s workshop in South Africa for specialised repairs.

Egenco said it expects the unit to return to service in the first week of October 2026. That single failure alone ripped 20MW out of the grid at peak time.

But Nkula B is not the only station bleeding capacity. At Nkula A, Units 1, 2 and 3 are currently generating a combined 24MW instead of their installed capacity of 35MW.

Egenco blames worn out turbine shaft seals.

The government, through the Reserve Bank of Malawi, allocated foreign exchange in July 2026 to procure the required spares. The parts were being manufactured abroad and expected to arrive this month, with Egenco projecting full capacity to be restored by September end.

Further downstream, Tedzani Units 5 and 6 have also been running below capacity for years. The problem dates back to Cyclone Ana in 2022, when debris and stones accumulated in the intake and choked the machines.

Compounded by years of delays in procuring critical spares due to forex constraints, these failures have pushed peak national supply down to roughly 370MW against a demand of over 450MW.

To try and bridge the gap, Egenco says it secured funding to pay for the most critical spares and is also working to restore faulty diesel generators, with all units expected back by December 2026.

Mathanga is also banking on the Mozambique-Malawi power interconnection project, which she said has reached a significant milestone following a successful hot-commissioning on August 8 2026. The interconnector should initially add 50MW to the grid and maybe scaled up later.

Commercial discussions, the last hurdle in the deal, are underway and expected to be finalised within the next two months, she said.

Further said the minister: “Please also note that on the Malawian side we finished construction by February, but our counterparts delayed following suspension of works due to a fatal accident that happened. What remains now is a high level discussion on commercial terms.”

The socio-economic effects of the current power deficits have been devastating.

In urban hubs such as Lilongwe, Blantyre, Zomba and Mzuzu, local businesses—from small-scale refrigeration shops to large manufacturing plants—have been forced to rely on costly, polluting generators to stay afloat while others just packed up.

For ordinary citizens, extended outages, sometimes lasting up to 24 hours, have disrupted daily life, while stunting economic productivity across a nation where less than 20 percent of the population is connected to the grid.

While Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi has recently urged consumers to conserve energy during peak hours to manage the shortfall, the ultimate solution lies in fixing the damaged plants—and in answering the bigger question.

With 86 percent of Malawians still dependent on biomass, we asked Minister Mathanga on ‘No Excuses: What is the plan for changing this?

In response, Mathanga cited the planned deployment of 117 000 liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cook stoves and 53 000 electric cook stoves by 2030.

Under the ministry’s national energy compact covering 2025 to 2030, the minister said government targets to transition 75 percent of households to clean cooking using different technologies. Apart from the Ministry of Energy, the private sector and development partners are also helping in advancing e-cooking.

She cited Atec, a private company implementing an e-cook project, which intends to distribute about 93 000 induction stoves in Blantyre and Lilongwe by December 2026.

Mathanga added that the United Nations Development Programme has supported a private company in Blantyre to construct a 40 metric tonne LPG storage facility and assisted in deploying 3kgs cylinders to 4 500 low-income households.

Catch the full interview with Minister Mathanga this Thursday at 7:30pm on our Facebook page and YouTube channel.