Who benefits? (Part 1)

As much as I respect the Senegalese government (see previous posts), the poor delivery here of such basic services as electricity baffle me. I want to ask someone, "Why are you doing this to your own people?"

During the rainy season (July-December), the power is cut, unannounced, several times a week--sometimes daily, sometimes more than once in a day-- for anywhere between 15 minutes and 10 hours. Apparently, the government, which subsidizes the power plants, frequently doesn't pay the bills on time, so the power company shuts down the plant--or has daily, rolling outages around the city to reduce output.

If there were even a schedule of outages published, it would be immensely better. Then individuals and businesses could at least attempt to plan activities requiring electricity for the times it would be on. (In fact, I'm told this was tried a few years ago, but the schedule was so seldom kept, it was more frustrating than having no schedule, so they quit publishing it.)

I suppose in a predominantly pre-industrial environment, reliable technological infrastructure is not crucial. Much of Senegal qualifies for that description. Farmers and carpenters who use hand tools, vendors with street-side stalls, even taxi drivers in diesel-fueled cars don't care whether the electricity is on or off.

But unlike much of the country, Dakar is not pre-industrial. There are factories, grocery stores, restaurants, banks, and many other businesses that depend on electricity to function--not to mention safety features such as traffic lights and street lights. Computers are common in businesses here, too. Cutting the current without warning is incredibly disruptive to life, businesses, schools.

The president promised last year that power outages would end on a specific day in October. And, in fact, they became very rare for several months. It was wonderful. You didn't have to wonder if you could perform a task (typing, printing, photocopying) at any point during the day. But the stoppages ramped up again in the spring, and have been horrible in the one week I've been back in town.

So, who benefits when the power goes out? Somebody must gain or it wouldn't keep happening.

Suppliers of generator fuel, perhaps? But aren't they the same people who supply fuel for the electrical generators (though perhaps at a lower,bulk price). "I expect," surmised one of my stateside relatives, "that the 'in crowd' (whoever that may be) gets great benefit for maintaining the status quo rather than for improving it. Parties with solutions could be threatening to the in crowd so their barriers to implement solutions are kept high." This is the most plausible explanation I've heard.

Whatever the cause, Africans suffer daily. And, year after year, entire nations pay the price of such infrastructural unreliability. See my next post for a sad example.