Kenya plans dams to beat its cycle of floods and droughts
Plagued by floods and droughts due partly to changing weather patterns, Kenya’s government plans to build several new dams in a bid to improve water security and management.
The national treasury is expected to approve the development of the $868m Magwagwa multipurpose dam in the west of the country, according to Raymond Omollo, CEO of the Lake Basin Development Authority.
The dam, 95m high and 450m long, will be filled using water sources that normally flow into Lake Victoria, which lies at an intersection of the Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian borders. This dam would be used to generate 120MW of hydropower, he said.
The construction of the Koru-Soin dam, at an estimated cost of 40-billion shillings, would start soon.
The dam was intended to supply water to the western
Kenyan counties of Kisumu and Kericho, the Star newspaper reported on March 12.
From July, the government will accelerate a programme to build other dams and increase water harvesting in the semiarid north of the country.
Proposals to build embankments to prevent flooding on several rivers are also under consideration.
Flooding caused by unusually heavy downpours has claimed the lives of more than 200 people and displaced at least 100,000 in Kenya so far this year.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has committed his government to spending at least 5-billion shillings on repairing roads and bridges damaged by the rains, as well as measures to minimise future flooding.
In contrast, part of last year was unusually dry and a drought left more than 1.5million people in Kenya in need of food aid.
Water levels in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, rose to the highest in more than 50 years on May 21, while Lake Kyoga, which lies downstream in Uganda, filled to a record high. The two water bodies are part of Africa’s Great Lakes system, which spans six countries.
Uganda battled to remove a weed mass as big as a small island from Lake Victoria after it floated towards a dam and disrupted hydropower production in April. The weed mass moved even after authorities opened up gates from the lake in the eastern Uganda district of Jinja in February, spilling enough water to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every six seconds, to safeguard the dam’s walls and power infrastructure.
The heavy rain has been attributed partly to a 1.2°C rise in temperature in the western
Indian Ocean over the past century. The phenomenon may also have contributed to creating ideal breeding conditions for desert locusts, which have recently staged the worst invasion in parts of Africa and the Middle East in decades and endangered food security.
East Africa is likely to experience severe weather events biennially — twice as often as it has over the past four decades — if temperatures keep exceeding historical averages, according to Mubarak Salih Babiker, a climate scientist at the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s Climate Prediction and Applications Centre, which conducts research and monitoring in 11 African countries.
“The most dangerous part of climate change is that these kinds of extreme events bring other ecological and environmental extremes such as desert locusts, pests and diseases,” said Babiker.
Governments needed to prepare for more floods, droughts and pests in future, he said.
CLIMATE CHANGE EVENTS BRING ECOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMES SUCH AS DESERT LOCUSTS, PESTS AND DISEASES