90 PER CENT OF MAPUTO RESIDENTS HAVE ELECTRICITY

Mozambique’s publicly owned electricity company, EDM, has invested 2.4 billion meticais (about 90 million US dollars) over the past five years in expanding and upgrading electricity infrastructures in Maputo city.According to an EDM press release, this resulted in an extra 440 kilometres of low voltage and 135 kilometres of medium voltage transmission lines. The number of Maputo households benefitting from electricity in their homes almost tripled in this period, rising from 90,000 to 236,000. EDM claims that access to electricity in the city is now at almost 90 per cent of the population.From 2006 to 2011, a further 273 transformer posts were installed in Maputo, thus improving significantly the quality of the electricity supplied.Entire neighbourhoods that had no electricity in the past are now linked to the national grid – including Guava-Mateque, Hulene, Magoanine C, Chamissava and Unguane (which is on Inhaca island). Public lighting has also been dramatically improved. The number of street lamps in Maputo has risen from 8,500 in 2005 to 23,800 in 2011.For 2012, EDM has set itself the target of raising access to electricity to almost 100 per cent of households in all Maputo city neighbourhoods.As of mid-November, in the entire country there were 921,704 households linked to the national grid – which is about 18 per cent of the Mozambican population. The Maputo city figure of 236,000 households accounts for 27 per cent of the national total.