Graca Machel bemoans electricity crisis

Former South African first lady and founder of the Graca Machel Trust (GMT) has bemoaned the poor access to electricity by African women who she says are making massive contributions to their economies, but continue to live in the dark ages.

Machel, who established GMT to advocate increased recognition, representation and participation of women in the economy through the establishment of networks, said Africa cannot progress when millions of Africans have no access to electricity.

According to the International Energy Agency, over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity and 80 percent of these are in rural areas.

In 2015, 92.4 percent of Malawians had no electricity, a situation that was worsened by frequent blackouts.

Speaking yesterday during a three-day annual conference of the GMT women’s rights network  in Johannesburg, South Africa, Machel said as they aim to build cohesion for inclusive growth, access to electricity is paramount.

“Women are spending productive hours fetching firewood, inhaling dangerous fumes in 2016. Women in rural areas are living in the 18th century, before industrial revolution, but time has come to change this. We cannot progress while hundreds of millions of women have no access to electricity,” she said.

Faggy Investments director and a member of the Network of African Business Women (Nabw), Peggy Ngwira, who supplies sausages to two Shoprite supermarkets and other shops, said electricity blackouts are affecting her business.

She said she no longer supplies her products as frequently as she used to.

“I process my products on orders, but without electricity, I cannot make sausages. We have electricity from 11pm to 4am when I have no workers to process meat, thereby delaying orders,” Ngwira said. n