HYDRO-ELECTRIC PROJECT

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26633, 19 January 1952, Page 3

HYDRO-ELECTRIC PROJECT

£15,000,000 SCHEME IN UGANDA NILE BEING DAMMED AT OWEN FALLS (By a Reuter Correspondent.) JINJA (Uganda). Engineers and artisans from many Ehiropaan countries and swarms of African labourers are working night and day on the £15,000.000 hydroelectric scheme which is designed to industrialise Uganda. When the tropical night tries to descend, it is banished by powerful floodlights, so that work of harnessing the Nile as it leaves Lake Victoria at Owen Falls can be completed by tho end of 1953. Work so far is up to schedule.

Eventually 10 sets of generators will orovide 150,000 kilowatts, or sufficient to supply the wants of 500,000 people in en industrial city such as Birmingham. Sixty per cent, of the scheduled output of the first six generators has already been bespoken by industry. Fourteen firms in all are concerned in the Owen Falls hydro-electric scheme and its necessary amplification. Among the artisans at Jinja are 31 British, 24 Danes, 12 Dutch, 44 Italians, and 30 Asians. Africans number between 1200 and 1300. As this is the first major industrial scheme undertaken in Uganda, the country naturally has few trained native workers. But the Uganda Electricity Board is doing everything possible to train natives to do the responsible jobs. Some of the bungalows and flats where 100 Europeans will live have amenities such as a swimming pool, rooms for indoor games and a bar for “sundowners." These buildings have been erected by Africans under European supervision and although British and Asian craftsmen have helped, the finished structures are regarded here as proof of the skill of the African.

I passed by the crocodile-infested Ripon Falls, which the two Dutch divers do not enter until they have fired a charge of explosive. I saw the place where the Nile will do a furious dive into a tunnel—and come out meekly at the other side after providing the power to drive the turbines. The Ripon Falls and other beautiful waterfalls will disappear when the huge dam is constructed and the level of the water at this point raised 60ft. The whole of Lake Victoria, the world's third largest expanse of inland water, covering an area of 26,200 square miles, may eventually rise about 39 inches In a storage scheme which would benefit the entire Nile Valley and be a tremendous advantage to Egypt and the Sudan. An Egyptian engineer is posted at Jinja as observer to see that the international Nile waters agreement is carried out. In other words, he is there to ensure that no one interferes with the proper flow of the waters which are so vital to his country. Meanwhile, the electricity which it will generate in a few years will, it is hoped, help to provide employment ’ana better living conditions for the rapidly increasing African population, which is expected to double itself in 20 to 25 years. The Uganda Electricity Board’s scheme at Owen Falls is, indeed, the first fundamental step towards effecting Uganda’s evolution from a purely agricultural country to one which lives on agriculture plus essential indstry..