Power to the people

| Friday June 25, 2010 00:00

On Thursday 13 September 2007, the dusty village of Gakuto in Kweneng East began its metamorphosis into the first fruit of a multi-million pula rural electrification project.

When scores of senior government and Botswana Power Corporation officials, as well as representatives of Swedish financiers and contractors, descended on the village, the inevitable excitement belied the enormous task ahead of all stakeholders: the electrification of 99 more villages across varying terrain, weather conditions and economic standards in three years!

The task, however, paled into irrelevance when weighed against the importance of delivering electricity to villages that have been in the dark since their inhabitants first settled in them.

While the significance is lost to urban dwellers, electricity boosts quality of life and livelihoods for villagers: new businesses open up while existing ones are able to offer better quality for longer periods, social services such as health and education are improved, private investors are attracted and modern conveniences such as mobile telephony and the Internet are made possible.

The provision of electricity enables villages to participate in mainstream economic activities and represents a cultural revolution from traditional activities/processes to modern methods. The significance of electrification was certainly not lost to Gakuto's traditional leaders who - at the launch - pleaded with the community to 'respect electricity and never vandalise installations'.

The significance is also not lost on Eltel Networks, the Swedish principal contractor engaged by the Botswana Power Corporation to carry out the 100 villages project. The contractor, which has a long and proud history in Botswana's electrification, understood the gravity of the contractual implications placed upon it to bring power to the people.

Eltel Networks Local Project Manager, Bengt Rostlund, says throughout the challenges faced since 2007, the principal contractor, its 18 subcontractors (12 of whom are citizens) and 800 workers, have not lost sight of the project's importance.

'We had to honour the project to the full,' Rostlund says. 'There was no room for shortcuts. Our focus was to follow government's intention in driving the electrification of these villages. We are hoping to finish the final seven villages within the vicinity of September. Without the challenges that we encountered, we would have been ready by April or May.'

One of these challenges was geology. The 100 villages involved in the project are spread sparsely across the country, from the southernmost tip of the Southern District to the Okavango Delta in the northwest, representing a rich and often hostile geological diversity. Eltel and its sub-contractors would often find these varying geological conditions from one village to the next within the same locality.

'You may find that in one village, we are able to simply use a labourer to dig holes for the poles because the soil allows that,' he explains. 'But in another, we are forced to engage a drill because the soil is hard or rocky. We had challenges in certain areas which have a thick and sandy overburden. In such cases, you struggle to secure the poles,' said Rostlund.

The abundance of infrastructure projects in some villages also complicated life for the subcontractors. Government, through National Development Plans, has a multi-pronged approach to infrastructure development across sectors such as water, telecommunications and roads. Each budget dedicates tens of billions of pula to various development projects designed to uplift citizens' lives while simultaneously incentivising foreign investment into other sectors of the economy. In some villages, subcontractors would face delays in coordinating their activities with contractors engaged in other infrastructural projects. 'In one village, we had received the approval for drawings and we had put our steel pegs where the poles would be,' says Rostlund.

'The subcontractor was then supposed to come and plant the poles on the spot where the pegs are. However, before the subcontractor got there, a contractor engaged in a water project came along and used the pegs to lay a water pipeline. We were quite surprised by this.'

A similar situation is unravelling in the village of Botlhapatlou in Kweneng East, one of the seven remaining villages in the electrification project. The principal contractor has thus far been unable to peg the route for feeder lines because the road next to which these lines should run is due to change course.

'We are hoping to reach a solution in this particular case this week, enabling us to move forward and the contractor to get on site,' Rostlund says with a sigh.

The boom of 2008 and the recession of 2009 also affected the mammoth electrification project adversely. Prior to the recession, engineering component costs, fuel and base metal prices were in record high territory, continuing a trend seen globally since 2005. Thus, before the recession, the cost of rolling out the electrification project pushed at the seams of the P588-million budget provided.

While the 2009 recession cooled the prices of some inputs, it put a squeeze on the availability of capital for infrastructural projects and budget overruns for approved projects such as the 100 villages. Budget overruns were in turn worsened by the depreciation of the Pula against the Rand (12 percent in 2009), which, along with the US dollar, is a major currency in the project.

As a result, the government had to dig deep into its coffers to pay out the contractual budget overrun of P42 million to wind up the project. 'We followed the indications in the contract and we did not ask for anything further than what the contract stipulated,' says Rostlund.

'The various inputs in the contract have indices which are tracked, and these are included in the contract. As we exceeded the budget, government added US$6 million which is a provision agreed to in the contract,' said Rostlund.

However, as the finishing line approaches for Eltel and its subcontractors, the 100 villages project has been conducted effectively and efficiently for the benefit of the government's intended beneficiaries -rural villagers.

When the last seven villages are handed over to the government in September, Botswana will have 368 electrified villages, achieving one of the biggest milestones in the country's history. It will also mark the single-biggest contribution to the government's stated 'sustainable development' initiatives.

'Electrification is one of the pre-requisites of meaningful rural development, successful industrialisation, as well as continued improvement of the quality of life of Batswana which answers one of Vision 2016's pillars of a 'Prosperous and Productive Nation,'' the Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Ponatshego Kedikilwe, said at the halfway mark of the 100 villages project.