RURAL Electricity Agency (REA) is targeting bringing electricity into all public institutions and homes by 2030, public relations and marketing executive, Johannes Nyamayedenga has said.
BY SHARON SIBINDI
“Our target which was approved by the Ministry of Energy and Power Development, which oversees the way we run our organisation is to make sure that by 2030 all public institutions and homesteads including the rural areas of Zimbabwe have access to one form of energy,” he said.
Nyamayedenga said REA was created through an Act of Parliament in 2002 and since that time, it has managed to make tremendous progress in the provision of energy in rural Zimbabwe.
“To date, we have electrified more than 9 000 public institutions country-wide,” he said.
“At one time, we nearly completed electrifying secondary schools and chiefs’ homesteads, clinics and rural health centres. Our good programme of land reform saw us failing to complete those projects because more clinics, schools and more villages were also built in new resettlement areas.
“We managed to electrify 2 581 primary schools, 1 318 secondary schools, rural health centres, 863, government extension offices, 396. We take chiefs homesteads as public institutions because they are leaders although they are traditional. They do government work in making policies for their subjects so we managed to electrify 224 of their homesteads and 21 are connected to solar energy,” he added.
Nyamayedenga said those with solar energy are far away from the existing electricity network.
