Senegal: Lights Out in Dakar

Senegal residents are thinking twice before buying anything that needs to be kept cold these days, and many hesitate to leave their homes after sundown. With mass power cuts suddenly the rule rather than the exception, refrigeration, streetlights and all things electrical, are now touch and go.

“With these power cuts, I’m asking myself, what do we dare put in the refrigerator?” says Bator Sall, as he plugs in a mobile phone charger at the office, the battery fully drained after an all-night power cut at home.

Reliable energy is rare in West African capital cities, but in Senegal, which experiences seasonal glitches at the height of the hot season when air conditioners are running on full, cuts as serious as those of recent weeks have not been seen in decades. “We’ve not seen anything like this in 30 years,” said Samuel Diadhiou, an athletics coach who returned from Europe to live in his native land in 1976.

AllAfrica