Seconds later, a generator kicks into life and heads are once again thrust under the dryers.

Tanzanian city folk are often hit by power outages. To keep their customers, businesses have resorted to an expensive alternative -- back-up diesel generators.

“We lost 70 percent of our business last year because of electricity shortages,” said Lidya Mwangi, manager at the Dar es Salaam School of Hairdressing salon.

“Most of our clients moved to other salons that had generators, so we decided to get one of our own.”

Despite vast reserves of natural gas off its Indian Ocean coast estimated at more than 444 billion cubic feet, Tanzania still suffers from power shortages.

Installed capacity from hydroelectric dams and diesel- or gas-powered turbines is 835MW, far above peak demand of 510MW.

But the power utility is beset by problems -- vandalism of its transformers, low water levels in its five dams and a dilapidated distribution network.

Low levels

In the last couple of years persistent drought has caused water in the dams to fall far below the level deemed by experts to be too meagre for prudent operation of the turbines.

The Tanzania Electricity Supply Company (Tanesco) asked the government to let it to run the turbines even at those levels.

“The water had fallen below 690 metres (2,264 feet) (in depth) but we had to continue production to avoid load shedding (power rationing),” said Tanesco spokesman Daniel Mshana.

The utility also had to buy fuel to run its turbines -- an expensive alternative given high world oil prices. In 2003, the government gave the firm $15 million to buy fuel and in 2004 the World Bank loaned it millions more for the same purpose.

“We hope that this is the final time that we have to give Tanesco money. It is not good for a commercial institution to be relying on others,” said World Bank country representative Judy O’Connor while signing a loan agreement in July.

High potential, low demand

Tanzania, a country of 35 million, has an environmentally cleaner alternative and one that is independent of the vagaries of weather -- natural gas, which can alone power its needs for the next 44 years.

“The potential to produce gas is high but the demand is low,” said Albert Manga, a supervisor at a $280 million gas plant at Songo Songo island, Tanzania’s main gas field.

Currently, the plant produces only 36 million cubic feet of gas a day. Some of it is converted into 110MW of electricity, which is injected into the national grid.

The rest is sent to five factories producing cement, glass, beer, plastic or aluminium items on the mainland.

The Songo Songo plant is designed to produce more turbine-ready gas than it currently does. One of its two production lines lies idle while the other works at only half capacity because of insufficient demand.

Dilapidated network

“In the future, our aim is to increase gas generation so we rely less on hydro generation,” said Mshana.

“We are moving in phases. In the first phase, we had four (gas) turbines. Currently, an additional turbine is being installed and another will be installed by mid this year. This will add up to 200MW (of gas-generated power for the national grid) by the end of the year.”

For several months now 12 areas in the commercial city of Dar es Salaam have been in darkness after thieves siphoned off coolant from transformers last year.

Even if the gas were to produce enough electricity for the whole country, the distribution network would not be able to cope. At full capacity the system can reach only 530,000 people, but often far fewer actually receive electricity because the distribution network is in a shambles.

Tanesco says the World Bank has agreed to a $57 million loan to rehabilitate it.

“We will use that plus our own funds to improve distribution which is currently very old and in poor shape,” Mshana said.