Zambia and Zimbabwe will give French engineering firm Razel-Bec the task of making safe the Kariba Dam, whose wall is swelling, raising the risk of cracks in the structure designed to hold back up to 180 billion cubic meters of water.
A collapse of the dam could pose a risk to 3.5 million people in Zambia and Zimbabwe as well as Malawi and Mozambique further downstream, according to a 2015 report by global risk managers AON.
“It is a real risk that the dam could fall without that effort being put in place,” Dam Maintenance Engineer Farai Furasa told Reuters, referring to the planned renovation.
“Some forces are pushing towards the dam wall and digging into it and the water could slip underneath the dam and cause it to collapse.”
The Zambezi River Authority, which manages the dam on behalf of the two countries, plans to reshape the plunge pool at the dam’s base and repair the spill-way, which controls the release of water, within five years. The dam was built in the 1950s.
Kariba Dam Safety Manager Kozanai Gurukumba told journalists on Monday said the expansion should be completed by the end of 2020, while work on the spill-way to contain the swelling in the dam wall is expected to be done by 2022.
“It has taken a while in terms of procurement process but the contract is now official,” he said.
“We expect the contractor Razel-Bec of France to take possession of the site by mid next month,” Gurukumba said.
He said the $294 million cost of the work would be funded through a combination of grants and loans.
The hydroelectric dam has installed capacity of 1,626 megawatts of electricity shared between Zambia and Zimbabwe, but severe drought in the region has reduced power generation, hurting the economies of both countries.
Bonjour failure!
HAPPY Valentine’s Day
@Nubian
@Mushota
@Kanta
Who else want for a walk with me at that romantic dest Kariba Dam.
Thank you # Nostradamus but I don’t like ifyama love!
I can sense some panic in Zambezi R.A. We had two poor consecutive rain seasons and nothing was done to start rehabilitation. We should just start funding DMMU to handle any situation that may arise. The dam is swelling and that’s when you are doing tender work
This rehabilitation story is just a hoax meant to siphon money just like roads infrastructure!
The story has been there since KK times. If the dam was really prone to collapse it must have collapsed a long time ago. The point is if really its necessary why talk of 2022? Come 2022 ub talking of 2030!
Constructions of the colonial times were to proper specifications (mix ratios). That means the dam is strong and sound. The thieves are fine-tuning our mindsets to believe their schemes. So when time to share loot we’ll not question them.
If the concrete is rotten then just build another dam alongside i.e. parallel!
Now they will have another excuse to turn off the turbines and drain the whole thing….loadshedding carries on!!
The water levels look ok to me. Or is it an old picture
Fact!!
Black Africans especially ZAMBIANS are allergic to good Governance, good living standards, & will GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO ELECT CORRUPT CROOKED LEADERS /OFFICIALS, & will even KILL YOU, If you dare try & help + point out to them that they are making wrong choices.
This is evident by;
-K.K International airportgate
-Maizegate.
– Kambwiligate.
-Feira Roadgate.
-Zambia Railwaysgate.
-U.T.H, No medicine /powergate.
-Contaminated Fuelgate.
– Late farming inputsgate.
-Stolen Electionsgate.
I COULD GO ON & ON GATE!!
Lest they subject us to another barrage of shoddy works we have seen from the roads country wide. Be serious for once, no corruption as this will spell disaster of epic proportions if it is not handled properly. Last time Dora and friends removed those Giant turbines from England and replaced them with fake Chinese made generators which have brought misery and unprecedented load shading. Should this dam collapse due to incompetence and sheer lack of seriousness and corruption, we will not even take you morons to court but we will deal with physically since all the courts in this country are in your pockets, watch out.
Let them fix it. They are a reputable company. There are too many lives at risk for us to join the list of arch dam failures.
Now I believe this Govt. is working. Two days now, no Loadshedding!!
A good thing to skip RDA having any hand in this project because we know how busted that dam will be.
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“Dam” refers to the wall. No need to say dam wall. The water body is the lake or reservoir. I thought this was taught in grade 7.
The World Bank is very confident that Kariba Dam is not in any danger of collapse, a view that is diametrically opposed by the Institute of Risk Management South Africa (IRMSA) and AON South Africa, which issued a report in 2015 written by IRMSA founder member Kay Darbourn. The World Bank has organised syndicated funding of almost $300-million to rehabilitate the dam. So which body is correct – the World Bank or IRMSA? Although The World Bank seems very confident that the wall won’t collapse, there have been suggestions that the body has been only too happy for scaremongering reports along the lines of IRMSA’s to circulate, as this has helped speed up the notoriously slow process of syndicating the loans required for rehabilitation. Poor planning do we have engineers or people in charge…
let the eventual loan failures commence. #AfricanProblems. infrastructure is built for you and you fail to maintain it. “Don’t Fix It unless It’s Broken”