TO DAM OR NOT TO DAM THE MURCHISON FALLS?

When government first mooted the idea of developing Bujagali dam in the 1990s, the opposition to it came from water rafting companies and joined by some environmentalists.

They were successful in stalling its development because they managed to arouse the funders concerns about the environment, including the fate of some frog that may go extinct with the development. It didn’t help too that the developer American energy company AES run into financial trouble, a result of the Argentinian debt crisis of early 2000s.

"The dam got built anyway after loadshedding had us groping in the dark daily and we saw the light...

Fast forward 20 years and we are gearing for another fight this time over the Murchison Falls in northern Uganda.

Last week state tourism minister Godfrey Kiwanda let slip that cabinet had approved a study of the Uhuru Falls that lie upstream from Murschison Falls. The potential promoters of the project estimate they can generate an additional 360 MW from the site.

We got a foretaste of things to come, when in June it was revealed that a South African company had applied for a license to develop the site, a precursor to carrying out studies. This time it was not a lone tour company fighting the development. Statements came fast and thick from everywhere including from the tourism minister Ephrahim Kamuntu who stopped short of swearing there would never be a dam in the park.

So why now the apparent about face by government. When faced with the facts it is no surprise that they would consider the proposition.

Currently only one in five Ugandans are connected to the grid. This figure alone speaks volumes about the state of our development or lack of thereof...

The countries with the lowest access to power are a who’s who of the poorest countries in the world – South Sudan, Burundi, Chad, Malawi, Liberia, Central Africa Republic and Mogadishu. And that is not by mistake.

It’s a straight line correlation no power, no industrilisation. No industrialization, no jobs. No jobs, widespread poverty. Another relationship that can be drawn is that countries with high incidence of poverty are unstable, probably the most unstable in the world.

The naysayers will argue of course that we have too much power at the moment.

With the commissioning of Isimba power dam earlier in the year, we sent our generation capacity beyond a thousand megawatts. The 600 Megawatt Karuma Dam is soon coming online and will further swell our power surplus. Our peak demand currently is about 500 MW.

But that will soon be snapped up with local demand doubling every seven years. And this before you consider growing demands from industry, which is set to increase and as we become more active in extractive industries.

A few years ago Professor Kisamba Mugerwa convinced me that our power needs are so huge that we need to start planning for nuclear energy.

It is currently estimated that the power generation capacity on the River Nile is about 4000 megawatts. The National Planning Authority projects that we will need about 40,000 megawatts by 2040.

Developing nuclear energy is so much more expensive than hydro power by after of at least twice, so we don’t have the capacity currently to develop nuclear plants. Thee economic activity that would come with extra power would be taxed to finance nuclear power in the future.

It is against this background that you can see why government would even consider a power dam in the Murchison Falls National Park.

The proposed site of the dam is one leg of a spilt in the river – the Uhuru Falls, with the other split being the Murchison Falls that we know.

We can’t preempt the study but there is a real possibility that the dam can be built without affecting the Murchison Falls, the spectacular view of the River Nile bursting through a seven-meter gap to fall more than 40 meters below.

The bigger argument against tampering with the site may be that the construction works may threaten the delicate balance of the environment, causing irreparable damage that may see the animals the park is famed for, and are its main attraction, immigrating elsewhere.

"If this was a straight political decision it’s an easy one to make. Animals or tourists do not sustain governments in power....

The politicians would frame the question as dooming four in five Ugandans to second class citizen ship for lack of power and its ripple effect on the economy or preserving the falls for the enjoyment of a few?

The middle road is to recognize that Ugandans urgently need improvements in their living standards but it would be nice to preserve the beauty of our environment. There has to be some give and take.

But decisions have to made now or necessity will force us to make even more unpopular decisions down the line.