SOUTHERN AFRICA: Plans to Dam the Cunene River Are Shelved Again

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Steven Lang

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 31 2007 (IPS) - Political interests and specialist lobby groups appear once again to have stalled plans to dam the Cunene River where it forms the border between Angola and Namibia. After years of negotiations, several expensive feasibility studies and considerable political rhetoric, the proposed Epupa Dam on the Cunene River is not even close to the beginning of a construction phase.

As recently as April this year, the Namibian government issued a briefing paper claiming that the Russian Federation was interested in forming a joint venture for the construction of a power station on the Cunene River.

Two months later Mines and Energy Minister Erkki Nghimtina was quoted in the local ‘Namibian’ newspaper as saying, “All (further) questions with regard to the Epupa project need no immediate consideration and are not relevant for answering.”

He never explained why his government appeared to have lost all interest in the project.

Soon after Namibia and Angola opened negotiations in 1991 for the construction of a hydroelectric project on the Cunene River, a serious division arose over the exact location of the dam. Namibia preferred a site four kilometres downstream from the Epupa falls, while Angola made a case in favour of a site in the Baynes Hills, a further 40 kms downstream.

Feasibility studies have shown that both sites are viable for water storage and electricity generation because the river has a fairly steep gradient. The Epupa site would be somewhat more cost effective, but would be more destructive to the environment and would directly affect a greater number of the Himba people who live in the north western corner of Namibia.

Angola is keen to build the project at the Baynes site because its smaller capacity would make it more dependent on flow regulation at the Gové dam further upstream. This means that a portion of the funding for a dam at Baynes could be used for the rehabilitation of the Gové dam that was damaged during Angola’s 27-year civil war which ended in 2002.

Plans to build the dam have enjoyed lopsided attention in the two countries directly involved in the project. Most of the course of the 1,120 km long Cunene runs exclusively through Angolan territory, and only forms the border between the two countries for the last 340kms as it flows west from the Epupa falls into the Atlantic Ocean.

The mainly Angolan river and the proposed hydroelectric dam are, however, of far greater interest to Namibia, a country that is short of both water and electricity. Most of Namibia is covered by desert or arid grasslands, and the country has only partial access to five perennial rivers in remote border areas – the Orange, Zambezi, Okavango, Chobe and the Cunene.

NamPower, the Namibian electricity authority, is struggling to keep up with the growing energy requirements of the country, and is interested in securing a reliable source of power to sustain the country’s economic growth rate, which has stood at three to four percent since independence in 1990.

Namibia receives about half of its electricity supplies from South Africa, a dependency that the Windhoek government would dearly like to reduce. ESKOM, the South African power utility, has warned NamPower that it is having difficulty meeting the needs of its domestic market and that in the near future there will be less surplus capacity to sell on to Namibia.

A large hydroelectric dam on the lower reaches of the Cunene would solve many critical problems for Namibia, and would also benefit the drought prone Namibe and Cunene provinces in Angola.

Angolans are rather sceptical of joint projects on the Cunene River because they have derived little benefit from the existing Ruacana-Calueque hydropower project. The Portuguese colonial power built the project that was financed and devised by the Pretoria government in the early seventies, mainly to provide irrigation water for agricultural lands in the northern parts of Namibia.

The Ruacana dam and power station, together with the Calueque dam 40 kms further upriver, were never fully commissioned because they had not been completed by the time civil war broke out in Angola. However, all the project elements that are operational have benefited the Owambo region of Namibia. While significantly less than the original project specifications, water and electricity from Ruacana are flowing into Namibia.

On the other side of the border, Angolans have to buy water from water- trucks, and large sections of the border region have no electricity at all. Voicing an opinion shared by many of his compatriots, the Angolan National Director of Water Affairs, Armindo Mário Gomes da Silva said, “Angola does not benefit at all from the Ruacana dam.”

The International Rivers network (IRN), an anti-dam lobby group based in California, has been campaigning against the construction of a dam at either of the two proposed sites, but it is particularly opposed to the Epupa site.

IRN says that because the Epupa dam would have such a large surface area, it would lose enormous amounts of water to evaporation. This is a serious matter in a region prone to droughts and water shortages.

In addition, IRN and other non-governmental organisations argue that the rising flood waters would ruin the way of life of the semi-nomadic Himba tribe. Family groups of the tribe live and farm cattle on both sides of the river.

It might be possible to graze livestock in new locations if the dam is constructed, but the Himba would lose touch with the graves of their ancestors forever.

It is clear that both Namibia and Angola have tacitly agreed that none of their grand plans to dam the Cunene river will materialise in the near to medium term. They have already approved funds for a less ambitious joint venture aimed at upgrading existing infrastructure linked to the Calueque dam.

The new Kunene Transboundary Water Supply Project will provide water to the village of Calueque in Angola and to other communities along the border with Namibia. It is a useful interim measure, but it will not solve the long term shortages of water and electricity in Namibia.