A power blackout that hit parts of Uganda, including its capital city, Kampala, compelled President Yoweri Museveni's administration to strike an emergency deal with Kenya.
Uganda's Energy Minister, Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu, announced that Kenya agreed to export electricity to the neighbouring country.
In a statement dated Tuesday, August 16, the minister disclosed that Uganda will purchase 60 megawatts from Kenya.
The deal comes after floods hit Uganda's 183-megawatt Isimba plant last week, forcing a shutdown.
Ssentamu warned that some parts of the country, especially along the Isimba Dam evacuation distribution lines will continue to experience intermittent power supply.
"We had to gather act so that we do not suffer a big load shedding (Distributing demand for electrical power across multiple power sources to relieve stress on a primary energy)," she pointed out.
Defending the move to purchase power from Kenya, Ssentamu stated that Uganda and Kenya had a bilateral agreement on power trade. Uganda will pay back Kenya in kind whenever Isimba Dam is restored.
Flooding at the dam commissioned only three years ago, Ssentamu noted, was due to human error. She, however, did not provide more details on the crisis.
Torrential rains in Uganda come right after a prolonged drought in vast swaths of the country that has left many areas parched and crops in fields scorched.
More than 300,000 people were affected by floods and landslides in Eastern Uganda and Bundibugyo in the Western region, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
An estimated 65,000 people were also displaced, the report added.
