Living with power cuts

Available for over a year

Around the world, millions of people live with daily electricity blackouts. In recent days in South Africa, protesters – angry that the electricity keeps going off – marched through Johannesburg and Cape Town. The country’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, said that it was understandable that people were fed up, but warned that it could not be fixed overnight. The situation has, however, been deteriorating for several years. All our guests express their frustrations with creaking energy infrastructure and inadequate responses from their governments. We speak to three women in South Africa who share their experiences. They tell us about their daily struggles to get everything done before the power goes off, the effect on their children’s education and concerns about security. Two business owners, in Sri Lanka and Nigeria, come together to discuss the financial impact of power cuts. Kayode, who runs a guest house, tells us the situation is so bad that he is thinking of leaving the country. We also hear from Bushra, a young researcher in northern Pakistan, and Serena who runs an online yoga business in Sri Lanka. They express their hopes for the future and Serena offers some advice: “Breathe, you have to breathe,” she tells us. “Yoga teaches us to let go and accept some of the difficulties and hardships of life.” (Photo: Ismail Sha studies with a rechargeable lantern for his final examination during one of the frequent power outages, called load-shedding, in South Africa, 25 October, 2022. Credit: Esa Alexander/Reuters)