NO, we have not yet experienced serious catastrophe as result of climate change although recently we have experienced problems like water shortages, power cuts, drought in some parts of the country that are linked to climate change, but this has not been directly linked to climate change. Like now the whole country is in serious power cuts problem and some government officials link this to climate change problems.

And this is what Chambi Chachage, an independent researcher, newspaper columnist and policy analyst based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania said concerning this subject:

These are the kinds of questions that make me think that perhaps there is more in the word 'power' than we use interchangeably with 'electricity'. No wonder the veteran journo, Karl Lyimo, thus rhetorically admits: 'It seems I'll never understand this even if I live to know the difference between power, energy and electricity!' Power cuts means we are a powerless people.

In my physics class I was taught that power is defined as energy over time. I was also taught that the law of conservation of energy states that you can neither create nor destroy energy. What you can only do is transform it from one form to another. And that is indeed what we have been doing since Uhuru*: transforming mechanical energy from moving water into electrical energy.

Human agency is what has done this transformation. It is this same agency that has transformed fuel energy from generators to produce electrical energy. Surely the same agency has the power to harness the heat from the sun and force from the winds and turn them into electrical energy.

With all these forms of energy in our country, how can we afford to be powerless? Why can't we have the same kind of belief that inspired Barack Obama to powerfully declare: 'We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories'? What is stopping us from being powerful enough to also conclude: 'All this we can do. All this we will do.'?

Power is about the distribution of resources. Let's redistribute our energy resources. Yes, we can.