The Electricity Grid during the Energy Crisis and Energy Transitions in Zambia

Karlotta Schultz

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Essay from the year 2018 in the subject Sociology - Economy and Industry, grade: 1,3, University of Edinburgh (School of Social a...

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Essay from the year 2018 in the subject Sociology - Economy and Industry, grade: 1,3, University of Edinburgh (School of Social and Political Sciences), language: English, abstract: This essay will firstly outline the meaning of electricity and the grid in anthropology and social science. Secondly, it will take a look at the events in Zambia which accumulated to the so called 'energy crisis'. Thirdly, it will discuss the experiences made by Zambians during this period and their interconnectedness to social and political life, and fourthly, analyse the dependencies of the envisioned transformation on historical structures and current practices that are manifested in the grid. Zambia is at the juncture of forming the future of its energy sector. The energy crisis from 2015-2017 revealed the vulnerability of the power generation sector, which is largely dominated by huge hydro-electric power projects from the late 1950s, and led to an increased political and social awareness for the necessity of an energy transformation in the country. While the energy crisis has brought into light the entanglement of political and economic interests and social inequalities which are strongly connected to the powerful copper industry and its emergence during the colonial era, these patterns are likely to be reproduced channelled by their manifestation in the grid infrastructure. Thus, the questions arise how the electricity grid and its breakdown mediated and exacerbated inner-societal imbalances, and how the crisis that was tied to this infrastructure opened up one particular way of overcoming it.