Zambia’s worst electricity blackouts in memory have been caused by a severe drought in the region that has left the critical Kariba dam, the source of Lake Musonda’s woes, with insufficient water to run its hydroelectric turbines. Less than half of Zambia’s 20 million people had access to electricity before Kariba’s problems.

Kariba was built in the 1950s and was meant to revolutionize the countries’ energy supplies by trapping the water of the Zambezi River, turning a valley into a huge lake and providing an endless supply of renewable hydroelectric power.

That’s not the case anymore as months of drought have put Zambia’s hydroelectric station on the brink of completely shutting down for the first time with less than 10% of normal output