Gambian businesses struggle under prolonged blackouts

BANJUL: In the coastal Gambian town of Tanji, Sirah Darboe-Manneh cleans fish beside a row of ice boxes lying empty because of constant power cuts. With ice in short supply, storing the day’s catch has become almost impossible.

Since June, the small West African country has been crippled by long blackouts, which have got much worse in recent weeks at the peak of the hot season.

Last week, two nights of chaotic, spontaneous protests broke out, with demonstrators blocking roads and calling for President Adama Barrow to resign. The protests came just months before Barrow seeks a third term in the Dec 5 elections.

The outages, some lasting between 12 and 48 hours, have left people in the deeply impoverished country in sweltering darkness at night. Businesses have closed, hospitals have had to switch to generators that have sometimes failed, and residents have struggled to charge their phones and keep food cold. In some areas, the water supply has been cut for up to 24 hours.

In Tanji, home to The Gambia’s largest fish landing site, the smell of rotting fish is becoming a problem.

“The customers are not forthcoming. They are not buying fish anymore because they don’t have a place to keep it,” Darboe-Manneh, a fishmonger, told AFP as she scaled a local fish known as sompato.

As a result, the 31-year-old mother of six has had no money for her children’s school supplies at the start of the new school year. She said the price of ice has more than doubled because the vendors, who often make it in home freezers, have no electricity.

In the heat, fellow fish seller Faraba Fatty put it simply: “without electricity, we have a very bad life.” The 58-year-old father of 13 said he can “sit the whole day without selling anything.”

As anger grows, Barrow has promised that the power supply will improve by the end of October. In a televised address last week, he said a 24-megawatt generator will be commissioned by then in Brikama, near the capital Banjul, and that a contract has been awarded for a 50-megawatt solar plant in Soma.

Vice President Muhammed Jallow, visiting a power substation in the town of Bijilo on Saturday, said Barrow has set up a taskforce that is “meeting literally on a daily basis.” In the short term, he said, The Gambia must make sure that “everything comes back normal” before putting in place a “long-term sustainable strategy.”

Everything ‘intertwined’

At the market in the western town of Sukuta, people bring millet to Amadou Gaye’s shack to grind in his small electric mill, for porridge or a local steamed grain dish called chere. But he cannot run the mill without power.

“People depend on millet for livelihood. We depend on electricity for livelihood,” the 40-year-old said.

In The Gambia, the money families use to buy food such as meat, chicken or fish is known as “fish money”. Gaye said everything is “intertwined”: with less income, he can now afford less fish from sellers like Darboe-Manneh.

In mid-August, the national utility, the National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC), blamed the blackouts on surging demand, mainly because of high temperatures, along with “constraints on electricity imports” and a technical fault.

In June, Barrow acknowledged that The Gambia owed money to Senegal’s state electricity company, Senelec, and said the debt had made it harder to stabilize the power supply. “We cannot deny that NAWEC is indebted to Senelec, and this is affecting our ability to deliver consistent electricity to Gambians,” he said.

‘Very painful’

The power cuts have forced tailor Ebrima Camara, 31, to use a foot-pedal sewing machine instead of his usual electric one as he struggles to finish school uniform orders for the new year.

“Using foot-pedalling to sew uniforms is very hard because it is slow,” he said.

The timing is bad for Camara, and for Barrow too. Although many Gambians resent his bid for a third term, he was seen as the country’s strongest candidate until the power crisis. Now his fate rests with voters like Camara, who pedals late into the night to make ends meet.

“It’s very, very hard. It’s very painful,” Camara said. “But I don’t have a choice.” — AFP