Zambia is the perfect place to develop large solar energy infrastructure thanks to the favorable climate and growing demand.
But, as this new form of energy production takes shape and receives support from the Government and industry giants, pollution caused by waste is becoming a real problem.
“Zambian families and companies throw their old solar batteries in the nearest corn field and then buy and install a new cheap battery,” summarizes Lameck Phiri, former director of the Ministry of Green Economy and Environment of Zambia to this newspaper. , referring to the piles of cheap lithium batteries, solar panels, broken current transformers and low-energy light bulbs clogging the ecosystems of the country's capital, Lusaka.
In the last decade, Zambia has invested millions in developing this new industry and has received international financing to do so.
This country of 20 million inhabitants has increased the import of these products necessary to produce solar energy, which it buys mainly in China, Vietnam and India.
“Solar energy production centers in Asia illuminate our homes cheaply,” Phiri summarizes.
But these products do not last long, because they are made from low-quality raw materials and, when they are no longer useful, they end up in landfills, drains, crops, ponds and streams in Lusaka.
“I have tried to convince Lusaka councilors to provide specific containers for electronic waste, where recycling companies can collect discarded solar equipment.
My request has fallen on deaf ears,” laments Engelbert Sakala, an independent scientist.
“Chemical residues of lead, glass and nitric acid from batteries are showing up in playgrounds, fish ponds and orchards.
“Its reckless disposal is poisoning Zambia’s urban ecosystems,” he adds.
Zambia already has a history of alleged poisoning by metal waste.
In Kabwe, a town where lead has been mined for decades, thousands of residents have complained of illness and health problems caused by water and crops contaminated by abandoned lead metal waste.
In December, South Africa's High Court dismissed a multimillion-dollar compensation claim against mining company Anglo-American, which Zambians had sued over mass lead poisoning in Kabwe.
“Within 10 years, the scandal of environmental lead poisoning will be repeated with solar energy waste,” predicts Sakala.
A sector in full growth
Since 2011, China has invested more than $50 billion globally, or 10 times more than Europe, in its photovoltaic energy supply capacity, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
In Zambia, exact data on imports of solar equipment from this or other countries is very imprecise due to porous borders (which allow informal smuggling), under-declaration of services customs and the poor maintenance of these government import control offices.
Zambia has little expertise on how discarded solar equipment should be recycled.
We do not even have specialized companies capable of managing the volume of waste.
It is a new industry in Zambia and much of Africa.
awanda Chitiyo, startup Tawanda Energy
The Government of Zambia is making efforts to increase the use of solar energy and has joined the World Bank's Solar Scaling program.
This initiative, offered to several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, ensures the implementation of solar energy safely and at the lowest possible cost.
In practice, it offers governments advisory services, contracts, financing, guarantees to create viable markets.
In Zambia, this plan was launched in 2015 to add 600 MW of new solar energy to the grid, and 48 international companies showed interest.
In 2016, two of these companies were awarded contracts to deploy 45 MW.
These were the French company Neoen and the American company First Solar, which proposed a rate of $6,015/kWh, the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa up to this point.
The solar energy market has advanced so much to date that in 2023, the United Arab Emirates embarked on a joint venture to develop solar energy generation and transmission infrastructure worth $2 billion (€1,847 million).
A year earlier, in 2022, First Quantum, a major global copper producer operating in Zambia, announced that it plans to power its copper mines in Zambia in the coming years, through a 500 million solar and wind energy installation. Dollars.
Over the past decade, electricity shortages have hampered mining operations in the southern African country, which relies almost entirely on hydropower.
According to Stella Zeke, an energy expert who worked in the Zambian president's office, “climate change, failing dams and mismanagement” are harming hydropower.
In the south of the country is the enormous Kariba dam, one of the largest in the world, which also supplies electricity to Zimbabwe and can provide 25% of the energy that Zambia needs.
But for the reasons Zeke cites, Zambian mines, factories and homes often go dark during frequent blackouts.
And frustration has focused attention on energy like solar, says Tapiwa Nhachi, a former researcher at the Center for Public Management of Natural Resources.
“We realized this is the way to go because climate change will seriously affect Zambia's hydropower in the future,” says Shanon Mbalu, secretary of the Lusaka Solar Importers Forum, an informal group of electricity retailers in the capital. Lusaka, explaining that, in the capital alone, 5,000 households have installed solar equipment on the roofs of their houses in the last three years.
A problem on a continental scale
But the enormous efforts to develop this type of energy are not matched by an answer to the pending issue of waste.
In theory, Zambia's recycling law – the Solid Waste Management and Regulation Act 2018 – prescribes penalties of up to six months in prison for serious cases of waste disposal without regard to recycling standards.
But, according to Mbalu, the rules are rarely enforced.
In southern Africa we do not have accurate, cross-border, digitized data on where our solar equipment comes from or where it ends up.
Lameck Phiri, former Zambian official
This problem affects the entire African continent, where there is a boom in solar infrastructure, but there is no way to treat and recycle waste.
“First of all, in southern Africa we don't even have digitized, accurate, cross-border data on where our solar equipment comes from or where it ends up,” asks former official Phiri.
This expert fears something even more serious if the problem of solar electronic waste is not urgently addressed.
“Rogue companies in Europe will one day send unwanted solar waste to African nations to dump there.
It has already happened with the garbage industry, which takes its shipments of toxic waste to Africa,” he says.
Solar panels on a landfill in Nakuru, Kenya James Wakibia (SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)
“Zambia has hardly any expertise on how discarded solar equipment should be recycled.
We do not even have specialized companies capable of managing the volume of waste.
Let us remember that this is a new industry in Zambia and in much of Africa,” says Tawanda Chitiyo, founder of Tawanda Energy, a startup focused on the decentralization of the energy market in southern Africa.
“Recycling solar waste and digitally tracking its progress is a costly endeavor that requires careful planning.
You have to have the necessary knowledge in the Government and in the sector, and with the will of the politicians,” he says.
The expert gives the example of France, which in 2018 inaugurated the first solar energy waste recycling plants in the European Union (EU) and proposes a formula: assign a barcode to all important solar equipment that enters Zambia through legal channels, with a seal that identifies the data of the seller and the buyer so that, when tracking electronic waste, specific people or companies can be held responsible.
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