As Drought Shrivels Hydro, This African Nation Pivots to Solar

Zambia’s energy crisis stems from an unprecedented drought. In 2024, southern Africa suffered its worst mid-season dry spell in over a century as El Niño brought record-breaking warm weather to the planet, leaving tens of millions of people food insecure. In Zambia, where 83 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from hydropower, the drought also decimated its ability to generate power as the nation’s lakes and rivers dried up. While only 42 percent of Zambians are connected to the national grid, millions who have come to rely on electricity for their livelihoods have been affected by the outages.

“The crisis has had a massive impact,” says Nicholas Phiri, permanent secretary for Zambia’s Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. “We are talking about those running barber shops. We are talking about those running welding machines, butcheries, hair salons.”

As the blackouts devastate businesses, the crisis has also wreaked havoc on the nation’s economy, reducing its revenues as citizens pay lower taxes and spend less money amid rising import costs and a weakened kwacha, the local currency. Trevor Hambayi, a Zambian economist, says the nation has lost approximately $1.3 billion due to the energy crisis, equivalent to 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. “At the end of the day, this is also going to increase the level of poverty within the country,” he says.

As climate change threatens more frequent and intense droughts, Zambia will remain vulnerable to such crises so long as it relies on hydroelectricity. That’s why the nation has recently pivoted to a more predictable type of renewable energy: solar.

In peak times, Zambia needs to provide households and businesses on the grid with 2,400 megawatts of electricity, but the drought has slashed its available hydropower generation from 3,777 megawatts to only 1,040 megawatts. The 1,080-megawatt Kariba Dam power station on the Zambezi River in southern Zambia, which ordinarily produces about a third of the country’s electricity, is close to shutting down completely, with the enormous Lake Kariba reservoir near record lows.

Zambia is currently in the bottom tenth of the world’s solar rankings, with solar contributing just 0.7 percent of the national output. But as power from the dam began to stutter, the government called for a “solar explosion,” and officials hope that percentage will increase dramatically as the nation seeks to diversify its energy supply.

In March, the Zambian government entered into a power purchase agreement with the Canadian producer SkyPower Global, one of the world’s largest developers of utility-scale energy projects, to supply 1,000 megawatts of solar energy — enough to power approximately 4 million homes. As the deal was announced, Zambia’s president, Hakainde Hichilema, said the project was “a crucial component of our Integrated Renewable Energy Plan, especially in the context of our current drought.”

Three months later, Hichilema commissioned a 60-megawatt solar plant in the city of Kitwe to supply surrounding copper mines with power, which will help mitigate the financial impact of the crisis on the nation’s biggest export industry. In August, the Chisamba District of Zambia’s Central Province announced the construction of a 100-megwatt solar power facility that is slated to take a maximum of two years to complete. Then, at the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation in September, China Datang Corporation and Zambia’s national provider signed an agreement to develop three solar energy projects by 2026 for an additional 220 megawatts.

Meanwhile, the African Development Bank has approved $8 million in funding to develop a 25-megawatt solar plant in western Zambia. A Turkish company has also partnered with Zambia’s GEI Power to develop in the south a 60-megawatt solar plant with battery storage that is scheduled to begin operations in September 2025 and serve 65,000 households.

If these projects are completed, Zambia’s maximum installed generation capacity would increase by more than a third; The government aims to source at least 30 percent of the nation’s energy from non-hydro renewables by 2030. This would not only alleviate crises in times of drought but could also supply electricity to people currently off grid, as well as accommodate a rapidly growing population.

Johnstone Chikwanda, an energy expert and chairperson of the nonprofit Energy Forum Zambia, says nature “has forced a major shift in [our] mindset. Zambia has come to realize that our safe zone is solar energy.”

The nation’s move toward solar and battery storage is a trend reflected across other African countries. Solar is growing fastest in South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Botswana, with large facilities operating and planned in those four nations.

Still, Zambia’s utility-scale solar projects won’t be fully realized for years. Just getting the panels to Zambia can take months, as most of the equipment is imported. China currently has a 55 percent share of Africa’s total supply market for solar panels.

In the meantime, the Zambian government is encouraging citizens to invest in personal, off-grid solar solutions, and in July it removed import duties and value-added taxes on solar equipment. “People are buying solar panels and batteries like hot cakes,” notes Chikwanda.

The ferocity of this year’s drought has led to unprecedented investment in solar. And while those efforts are now mitigating the impacts of the energy crisis for thousands of Zambians, some fear the nation risks running head-first into another energy relationship that’s dependent on meteorological conditions.

Climate scientist Robert Vautard, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group that assesses the physical science of climate change, says that experts are “expecting more extreme weather in all southern African regions,” including flash floods and extreme drought. A 2023 study led by scientists from Australia’s CSIRO agency also found that greenhouse gas emissions were likely making strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation events, including the rainier La Niña phase, more frequent and severe.

Tracy Ledger, an anthropologist who leads the Just Transition Programme at South Africa’s Public Affairs Research Institute, says Zambia and nations across the globe need to “integrate the reality of climate change” when they make decisions around energy infrastructure.

“It’s not just about what a climate-neutral energy system looks like. But what does a climate resilient energy system look like?” she says. “If you incentivize every single household to put solar on their roof, what happens when the inevitable storm or flood comes and they wash away? I don’t see a level of critical thinking about how we climate-proof our energy systems.”

“In Zambia, we don’t always have very long sunlight hours, unlike areas that are closer to deserts, like Namibia or Egypt,” says Kabwe Mubanga, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Zambia’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. “Some research really has to be done in that area to comprehensively say this is a direction we should take.”

The high start-up costs of solar remain another obstacle. While smaller solar devices might help power a lighting system or charge a phone, there’s no cheap substitute for the demands of bigger operations.

Moses Fwanyanga, 43, owns a small fish farm close to the banks of Lake Kariba, just miles away from the power station. He needs electricity to pump water from the lake into his fish ponds, half of which have dried up due to the blackouts. His business is barely surviving. “I got a quote from China for solar that would help me pump water during the blackouts, but what I needed was going to cost $10,000,” he says. “We cannot afford that. We are living hand to mouth.”

The government will also need support to integrate solar into the national grid. Zambia’s Ministry of Green Economy and Environment has called on more international aid, most recently appealing to India to set up manufacturing plants in Zambia for solar panels, batteries, inverters, and other accessories. A 2023 agreement with the United Arab Emirates renewables company MASDAR to develop solar projects worth $2 billion in Zambia has stalled but the agreement is ongoing, according to the company.

For Mubanga, at the University of Zambia, a more cost-effective, climate-resilient solution needs to embrace hydro and solar as well as wind, geothermal, and even coal. Zambia currently draws just 13 percent of its power from coal, but this year’s outages have forced the government to approve plans for the nation’s second and third coal-fired power plants. Unable to light their electric stoves, the blackouts have also pushed many Zambians to use charcoal for their cooking, creating a huge demand for the resource, which is accelerating deforestation and leading to increased carbon emissions.

Mubanga says Zambia’s Ministry of Energy has also identified more than 80 hotspots for geothermal energy, as well as locations for hydroelectric in the north, where there’s more rainfall. “You need both adaptation and a coping strategy,” he says. “For me, solar is a good back-up.”

But the Zambian government hopes that “back-up” will provide more than a third of the nation’s electricity by 2030. And while solar’s prospects as a viable, long-term energy solution in Zambia remain uncertain, for many it is already indispensable.

Earlier this year, Emmanuel Simukoko purchased, for $27.50, a solar light that he can also use to charge his phone. “When you don’t have electricity, everything is a challenge,” he says as he sets up for the night shift. “With solar, I can keep a light on.”