Drought-broken dams push Zambia and Zimbabwe back to coal

Two-thirds of Africa's new coal proposals in 2025 came from two countries whose hydropower failed in the El Nino drought.

Zambia and Zimbabwe are turning back to coal after drought broke the hydropower their grids were built on. More than 80% of Zambia's supply and about half of Zimbabwe's came from hydro in 2024. Droughts tied to the 2023–24 El Niño cut inflows to Lake Kariba on the Zambezi and generation with them, producing one of the region's worst energy crises in decades. Households went through outages of up to 18 hours a day, mines lost production, and both governments imported power, imposed load-shedding and burned more coal.

The shift shows in the pipeline. Global Energy Monitor's Boom and Bust Coal 2026 report puts the two countries at more than two-thirds of all new coal power proposals announced in Africa during 2025. Zimbabwe's industrial plans lean on it directly: coal from the country's west feeds steelmaking, including a Chinese-backed plant in Midlands province.

This is a rare double reversal — power getting dirtier and, once health and pollution costs are counted, more expensive. Kariba, running since 1960 and shared equally between the two countries, is now a climate-exposed asset, and new coal locks in emissions plus a future penalty on exports under carbon border rules such as the EU's. The counter-current is decentralised: rooftop solar and net metering, financed by households rather than the state.

Watch whether finance reaches those households at scale — scarce credit and policies still favouring fossil fuels are what slows solar here, not its price. The rooftop share, put at roughly 6% to 8% of Zimbabwe's electricity, is one campaigner's estimate in the source.

Source: Mongabay