Blackouts, scandal and sexy US diplomats: An adventure through the interwebs!

Tuesday was my second day at work. I came in at 8, excited to sit at my desk, work on some spreadsheets (oh my!), go to some meetings, and still be ready for a hike at any moment. However, around 9 am, I noticed my macbook said ‘Not Charging.’ I got up and switched the plug to a new outlet. Still not. Huh.

After a while, I realized we were in a power blackout. (I sit by a big window so we usually don’t use overhead lights.) Supposedly, the office was supposed to have generators so that we could work through the day, but these weren’t working. So people finished their meetings, and eventually trickled home as laptop batteries ran dry. Some of my co-workers asked me if we had power blackouts in the US. At this point, I naively failed to realize these were scheduled, rationed blackouts. I stammered something about storms and tree branches hitting power lines. I got some confused looks.

That night, I went to a local outdoor pub for rice and beans with my coworker C. and his brother G. Both are from a rural town in Tanzania, but G. went to graduate school at a large US university that rhymes with Barvard, and currently hosts Fogarty fellows at his NGO here in Tanzania.

As we sat in almost complete darkness, I asked them what the deal was with the power outages. Ah, G. said, good question. The story he went on to explained was a complicated tale.

Traditionally, Tanzania’s electricity relies on hydroelectric power. In the past ten years, two factors have come together to generate a large gap between supply and demand: El Nino and global weather changes have lowered available supply, while at the same time the growing economy and urbanization has led to a surge in demand. These two things add up to rationing, or rolling blackouts.

These elements of the story are natural. Now enter 1. Ostensible desire to help and 2. Human fallibility. G. explained that four years ago, the government contracted with a US company to buy, install and generate power using large turbines to be placed in Dar. However, after years of protracted dealings, no turbines emerged, the US company shifted their assets around, no power was generated, and eventually the Tanzanian prime minister resigned over the scandal. Though stable, Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world. The rolling blackouts have had an immense effect on depressing productivity and the entire economy.

G. then entered into a lengthy (and informative) discussion of the imbalance of power between a developing country like Tanzania and world powers with a financial interest. Of course, GL, BM and I, as card-carrying yuppies interested in moving abroad to do ‘development work,’ have all read the basic curriculum of Sachs, Easterly and Collins. We know a little bit about a few things. But as I listened to G. talk, I started to wonder just how sheltered our perspective still was.

G. mentioned scandals and seemingly conspiracy level situations as if they should be basic knowledge, but these were not things I’ve encountered in the New York Times or New Yorker. When I got home, I decided to see what the internet could tell me. What follows is my while goose-chase around the web.

I started by googling ‘tanzania energy scandal.’ After reading various articles (mostly from Africa focused online publications, no nyt or wapo, of course), I found the name of the US company: Richmond Development Co, from the mighty state of Texas. I changed my google search for ‘tanzania energy richmond llc”

Here’s short version of what emerges: In 2006, Tanesco, the Tanzanian government energy group, entered into a contract with RDEVCO, for RDEVCO to design, install and run power turbines in Dar es Salaam. Interestingly, Tanesco would not own the turbines, but would instead pay to then ‘use’ power produced by RDEVCO on Tanzanian soil. That is stupid and has kickbacks written all over it, but fine, whatever.

RDEVCO then contracted with another US group, Vulcan, to purchase the actual turbine. Then, RDEVCO contracted with a Tanzanian holding company, and signed over the rights of the Tanesco contract as well as the turbine purchase agreement to Dowans, the new Tanzanian company. Yes, this is all very confusing, and now RDEVCO and Dowans are currently fighting over who actually did own the turbine when it arrived in Dar. But here’s the kicker, somehow in all of this, the International Chamber of Commerce, in Paris, France, has ruled that Tanesco is the one in breach of contract with Dowans, and last fall has ordered Tanesco to pay $120 million for breach of contract. Let’s keep in mind that during this time, regular Tanzanians have been living with constant and devastating blackouts.

One might wonder, who is this mysterious Richmond Development Co.? To the internet! RDEVCO’s dark blue template style website informs me that “Energy Infrastructure Development helps economies and communities struggling to meet their rising demands for electricity. By designing, overseeing, and securing financing for large scale energy projects, RDEVCO meets this need and helps aspiring people find success and build a brighter tomorrow.” How nice. The leadership page also tells me that they have a Mr. Nick Lampson, a US Congressman, on the team. In fact, the second person listed.

Now, it’s understandable that if, for the last four years, 40 million Africans have been cheated out of having affordable electricity delivered to their homes through some shady business contracts, it wouldn’t be news I’d hear about. I mean, who cares. But, doesn’t the involvement of a US Congressman make it at least worthy of an inside page NYT blurb? Apparently not. Mr. Lampson’s Wikipedia page has no mention of anything related to Richmond or Tanzania or blackouts.

So what’s going on with the turbines now? Why did I go home yesterday instead of working to eradicate HIV through Excel spreadsheets from my air-conditioned Dar es Salaam NGO office? Well, this gets weird too. The latest news results for Tanesco show that they are in the process of signing a contract for a new US company to operate the turbines in Dar. This company is called Symbion Power, and it’s CEO, Paul Hinks, came to Dar yesterday to sign the papers.

The first weird thing is that many of the small news sites quote an ‘exclusive interview Mr. Hinks gave to the Guardian last week.’ Now, I’m assuming this means the British Guardian, so I tried to find the original article. However, guardian.co.uk turns up no recent results for either Symbion or Hinks. I even googled around for other possible papers named ‘The Gaurdian,” but not surprisingly the local newspaper in Idaho did not interview Mr. Hinks in Dar, or anywhere else.

What I did find in the British Guardian though, was a curious little stub article from 2002 that implicates Mr. Hinks, at that time a managing director of a UK energy firm, in possibly illegal kickback payments to a Ugandan official in relation to a dam construction contract. As a result, the dam project was stalled, and I’m assuming, some Ugandan people didn’t get the electricity they were promised.

Huh, weird. Now, who is Symbion Power and this elusive Mr. Hinks? The website of this US registered company tells me that “Symbion Power was built on a foundation of partnership and cooperation. Even our name – a derivative of the word Symbiosis – reflects the cooperative relationship we maintain with key suppliers, local partners and subcontractors.”

…Really? Do these companies hire middle school cheer-camp directors in the off-season to write their PR? Perhaps the most urgently needed NGO is one that teaches African leaders how to smell bullshit.

Anyways, I’m much more reassured when I get to the leadership page, because lo and behold, they also have a trusty US public servant on the team: Mr. Joseph Wilson, the former H.W. appointed ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe. (I once read in some article that when you become president, you have to find jobs for all the people you kind of want to please but really don’t know what to do with, so you stick them as ambassadors to obscure countries.)

So, we will see if Symbion, Mr. Hinks, and Mr. Wilson will save the day and the blackouts improve this summer. I have a hunch that they won’t.

Oh, Symbion also has a British LORD on the team. This beautiful man:

Now here’s a caveat, I’m not an investigative journalist. I tried to find multiple sources but I didn’t really validate or fact check anything here. This is why blogs, like women, are both beautiful and dangerous. But this is what I found to satiate my own curiousity, and furthermore, this example is an interesting entry into a debate that GL and I have had in the past, about whether in the end, NGOs or for-profit business will save the world.

G., my Tanzanian friend, repeatedly told me that what US companies are not allowed to do in the US, they come and do it here. And now that the scandal has been perpetrated, is there a court in the world that will rule in favor of the people who actually need the power? Apparently not. Of course, this doesn’t acquit the corrupt Tanzanian leaders who got the country into the mess by signing contracts that obviously didn’t benefit their countrymen for the sake of some personal kickbacks. But still, is it then valid to say that even relatively stable developing countries like Tanzania do not have the political infrastructure to benefit from the undeniable perks of well-regulated capitalism? I don’t know.

In other news, I’m getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and might well have malaria. Stay tuned.