By: Siziwe Mota, Africa Programs Director The global Covid-19 crisis has shed a light on the deep-seated inequities in the way our rivers and the people who depend on them are treated. With the exposure created by this crisis comes an opportunity. As International Rivers adapts to current circumstances, we are strengthening our support network…
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By: Siziwe Mota, Africa Program Director The Kunene River forms part of Namibia’s border with Angola. The idea of damming the Kunene dates back as far as when the Germans occupied Namibia and there have since been a number of dams and weirs on the river. In 1991, the Namibian and Angolan governments began exploring…
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By: Africa Program On the occasion of the visit of African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), International Rivers calls on the institution to withdraw its support from the Inga 3 Dam. President Adesina was scheduled to visit the Inga site on Wednesday, June 19 as part of…
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International Rivers’ advocacy training in DRC aimed at strengthening the movement of civil society partners and community groups to effectively advocate for the protection of rivers, rights of dam affected communities, and energy access. At the end of the training, groups were encouraged to sing their visions for their campaigns, which helped them take ownership…
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By: Josh Klemm, Policy Director Last month, after a long-running saga, the World Bank signed away its legal obligation to protect Uganda’s Kalagala Falls, a site of immense spiritual and biodiversity value near the headwaters of the Nile River. By granting Ugandan authorities permission to flood Kalagala, the Bank has harmed thousands of local people…
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By: Fidelis Zvomuya “Rather than look upstream in anger, we must start looking downstream with compassion,” said 79-year-old Mafiosi Siabwanda, a Tonga elder from Mola in the Nyaminyami District of Kariba, Zimbabwe. He admitted that human activities happening upstream in1 the Zambezi River are having devastating impacts downstream. “The situation is dire,” he said. “Millions of…
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By: Josh Klemm, Policy Director Earlier this month, the DRC government seemed to acknowledge what we have long argued: The proposed Inga 3 Dam, touted for decades as a fix-all to the country’s energy woes, is not a good investment. By calling on developers to radically alter the design of Inga 3, the DRC’s minister in…
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“Go and tell them that we, the women of Inga, are suffering” By: Ange Asanzi, former Africa Program Associate One thing is for certain: the women of Inga are self-sufficient. They grow avocados, oranges, bananas, cassava, nuts and beans. They harvest medicinal plants to tend to their sick. Nearly everything they consume comes from their…
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By: Rudo A. Sanyanga, former Africa Program Director This article was previously published in thePerspectives #02/2017: Putting People Back Into Infrastructure The electrification rates of Africa are appalling: the lowest in the world, with as little as 1 percent access in some rural areas. The average electrification rates in sub-Saharan Africa range from 16 percent in rural areas to about 59…
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By: Rudo Sanyanga, former Africa Program Director Although I had spent many years working on the Zambezi River, the lower Zambezi region in Mozambique was unfamiliar to me. I had crossed the Zambezi at the Tete Bridge a few times before but had never been on the stretch between the Cahora Bassa Dam and Tete town…
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By: Wim Jonker Klunne Africa is home to one of the world’s largest off-grid populations: approximately 590 million people live with no connection to their national electric grid, according to the International Energy Agency. Grid expansion in Africa has been notoriously slow, and thus new solutions are needed to bridge this energy divide. Small hydropower can play a pivotal role…
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