World Bank to help east African countries on power crisis

World Bank is preparing funding Uganda and Tanzania to cope with the power crisis triggered by a three-year drought, the state-owned New Vision daily reported on Friday.

Bank officials said they were preparing a loan of around 100 million U.S. dollars for thermal power to Uganda, which uses hydropower from Lake Victoria, already at its lowest levels.

They said a decision on the funding is likely after the August recess of the World Bank board of member countries.

In Tanzania, the bank is considering using 80 million dollars left from a loan.

Uganda and Tanzania have been worst hit by the power crisis and are currently enforcing rolling blackouts that are hurting their economies.

Mark Tomlinson, the World Bank's country director for regional integration, said power shortages facing the governments over the next few years would hurt the region's competitiveness unless the situation was addressed.

"An estimated 1.3 billion dollars in new investment in the East African Community (EAC) region was needed for additional power generation and an extra 1 billion dollars for transmission over the next five years," he said.

EAC is a regional body that brings together Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The region's generating capacity is around 1,200 megawatts, but current use is about 800 megawatts.

Jumma Volter Mwapachu, the secretary general of the EAC during a meeting with visiting World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to Tanzania called for a quick intervention to address the power crisis in the short-term.

He said the EAC is currently working on developing an east African power grid in which all three countries could share resources and shortage capacity.

Source: Xinhua