Zambia suffers second big power outage in a month

Zambia suffered a nationwide power blackout on Saturday, leaving a large part of the country without electricity for the second time in a month. 

State-owned electricity utility Zesco spokesperson John Kunda confirmed the outage in comments broadcast on Saturday on privately owned MUVI TV.

By early Saturday afternoon, power had been restored in parts of the capital, Lusaka, as well as the southern, western and central provinces, according to a statement from Hazel Zulu, a spokesperson for Zesco. Investigations to establish the cause of the loss of generation are still under way, she said. 

A significant part of the country was hit by a partial blackout early last month after a failure at the Kariba power station, impacting operations of Konkola Copper Mines and other producers of the metal.

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