Tete — Tete, in western Mozambique, will soon become the second province in the country to have all its districts linked to the national electricity grid.

Speaking to reporters in Tete City, the director of distribution of the Mozambican electricity company, EDM, Alberto Banze, said that the project to electrify Tete districts, launched three years ago, will be concluded in the first half of 2009.

"The objective is to illuminate all the districts of Tete by the end of 2009", said Banze. "After Maputo, Tete will be the most electrified province in the country".

Although the main source for the electricity in the national grid is the Cahora Bassa dam, which is in Tete, when the project started seven of Tete's 13 districts (Chifunde, Macanga, Magoe, Maravia, Mange, Tsangano and Zumbo) were not linked to the grid. Electrifying these district capitals represents an investment of 34 million US dollars.

Questioned about the project's impact, Banze explained that "initially, electrification of these districts will benefit about 4,000 potential new clients, a number which should grow with the passage of time".

Currently, EDM has 25,000 clients in Tete province who are linked to the national grid. This means that about eight per cent of the province's population has access to electricity: the national figure is that around 13 per cent of the population has electricity in their homes.

Banze said all the indications are that four of the districts not yet linked to the grid - namely Magoe, Mange, Chifunde and Tsangano - should be electrified by the end of this year, because the building work is nearly complete. "If everything goes well, we shall finish those that remain by end of the first half of next year", he added.

Asked what kind of undertakings would benefit from the electrification, Banze cited agriculture and fisheries (on Cahora Bassa lake).

This additional electrification will not make much of a dent in the 400 megawatts that EDM currently purchases from the Cahora Bassa operating company, HCB. Currently all of Tete province, including Tete city, uses just 13 megawatts. Electrifying all the other Tete districts will bring the figure up to 14 megawatts.

Electrification will relieve some companies of the need to keep enormous deposits of diesel (in some cases, more than 20,000 litres) required to ensure that their generators can run for 24 hours a day.

AIM visited a crocodile farm and fishing companies on the lake which operate such generators. Although they are just 70 kilometres from the dam, so far not a drop of Cahora Bassa power has reached them. Under the previous Portuguese management, the main purpose of Cahora Bassa was to sell power to South Africa. Using the electricity produced by the dam for Mozambique's own development was very low down the Portuguese list of priorities.

That changed on 27 November 2007, when Mozambique purchased most of the Portuguese holding in HCB and took effective control of the dam. One of the early moves of the new, Mozambican management was to ensure that the amount of Cahora Bassa power reserved for EDM rose from 300 to 400 megawatts.

At the same time as expanding the grid, EDM is working to improve the quality of the power supplied to its clients. In the central area of Tete city, the quality of the power supply can be regarded as acceptable - but the same is not true of the peri-urban parts of the city, or the other districts in the province.

"There are problems in the areas surrounding the city", Banze admitted. But large scale work, budgeted at 10 million dollars is under way to improve the quality of the electricity, and Banze expected this to be concluded by June 2009.

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