NPR covers Bujagali dam controversy
23 August 2007
Last week, National Public Radio's Morning Edition broadcast a story on the debate surrounding the World Bank-financed Bujagali dam in Uganda.
The cornerstone-laying ceremony held yesterday kicked off the construction of the $800 million project, the largest private investment in East Africa's history. Bujagali dam is the third to be built on the Nile in Uganda, just downstream of the river's source, Lake Victoria. Ugandan authorities and project supporters like the World Bank maintain that the dam is the best solution for addressing the country's energy needs. While all agree that Uganda needs more energy, opinions differ greatly on how that energy should be generated, and whom it should benefit -- the 5% of the population currently connected to the electricity grid, or the millions who remain, literally, in the dark. Local activists have raised serious concerns about the cost of the dam and the affordability of the energy it will produce for the country's power grid; its impacts on the health of Lake Victoria, whose water levels have declined drastically since the mid-20th century; and the destruction of the whitewater rapids just above the planned dam site, which have become the center of a growing tourism industry. Though the popular Bujagali falls are set to be silenced, the debate rages on.