In early November, The Nation carried a screaming headline on the front page which read ‘Dark hours get longer, Malawians endure prolonged blackouts’.
It was a story prompted by long hours of no power in most parts of the country which were attributed to reduced power generation due to technical faults.
The prolonged load shedding hours became more pronounced from November 1 2025 as consumers were exposed to more than five hours of rationing that Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) Limited was implementing since July this year.
Malawi’s available electricity capacity now stands at approximately 350 megawatts (MW) against a national peak demand of 413MW.
Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) Limited, the main independent power producer and feeder into the national grid, is not producing to full capacity as its Tedzani III Hydro-electric Power Station Unit 5, with a capacity of 31MW, remains offline since December 2024 due to burnt generator stator windings.
The Malawi Government envisioned to have 1 000MW of electricity by 2025. However, the target was missed due to various factors, including foreign exchange shortages and access to finance by some prospective investors. Thus, the energy or electricity mix remains at approximately 554.24MW of installed generation capacity comprising 401.84MW from hydro sources, 101MW from solar and 51MW from diesel generators.
Every time Egenco’s generation capacity falls short, the most frequently asked question has been: Where is power from the solar sources launched with pomp in the past few years?
Production of solar power is largely dependent on sunlight such that output from solar-based IPPs dwindles or fluctuates when the weather is stormy or cloudy and even in the dark of the night. This situation creates instability in the grid, forcing the grid operator, in our case, Escom, to reserve up to about 45MW for grid stability. Now, in a country like Malawi where power is in high demand, that is a lot of energy, enough to power a huge mining investment.
Perhaps in a bid to overcome or cover up the solar power shortfalls, Escom has invested in Battery Energy Storage System (Bess) geared at improving grid-scale storage solutions for a few more hours.
From the foregoing, hydro remains the most dependable energy source for Malawi until investments in solar are backed by battery storage technologies by the IPPs, not Escom as is currently the case with Bess. The battery storage system is a power bank that ideally every solar power producer should have, not just the buyer, Escom.
To address the energy deficit, an energy audit is one thing that needs to be done as soon as possible. How many power generation plants have been built post-independence in 1964? Here, what comes to mind is the Kapichira Hydro Power Station in Chikwawa District implemented in phases since the year 2000. The 1 000MW Mpatamanga Hydro Power Station is taking off the ground with construction of an initial 300MW phase, a good development and potential solution to the power woes in the medium to long-term.
During the equipment audit, obsolete infrastructure in the colonial era power plants should be removed and modernised as it happened with Nkula 1 Hydro Power Station during the Millennium Challenge Corporation energy company that expanded and improved the country’s electricity infrastructure.
The Malawi-Mozambique Power Interconnection Project, set to feed 50MW into the Malawi grid from February next year, is seen as another short-term solution to stabilise electricity availability. However, at a cost of $5 million (about K8.7 billion) per month, it may not be sustainable until such a time the country will have enough electricity to export so that the costs cancel out.
Sub-Saharan Africa, where Malawi lies, has the lowest access to electricity among the world’s regions with an average of 22 percent as of 2015, a sharp contrast to 80 percent access in Latin America and 60 percent in South Asia.
There is need to diversify the sources of hydro generation as well from the Shire River. For over 20 years or so, I have heard about hydro projects such as Lower Fufu and even the Malawi-Mozambique Interconnection Project plus several others recently added to the list, but with little to show for it.
Malawi needed to address the energy woes as soon as yesterday to set a solid foundation for the achievement of the aspirations outlined in the Malawi 2063, the country’s long-term development strategy.
