Zambia’s first significant hydroelectric facility is operational and located on the Kafue River about 90 kilometres south of the country’s capital Lusaka. Five Francis turbines with a combined installed capacity of 750 mw will be placed at the Kafue Gorge Lower Hydropower Station, built by PowerChina, and scheduled for commissioning in July 2021. The facility not only hastened Zambia’s industrialization process, but it has also altered the lives of numerous Zambian youth. One of them is Gift Kapanda, a 35-year-old. When the young Zambian attended the Sinohydro Training Institute in 2017, his life took an incredible turn. PowerChina had founded the institute to provide free vocational training courses to teach skilled personnel for the hydropower project and develop skills for local initiatives in Zambia. Kapanda enrolled in the institute, where he began his “transformation” while studying electrical engineering.
Similar to Kapanda, the Sinohydro Training Institute in Zambia has drastically altered the lives of more than 300 young people. Their lives have changed as a result of the skills they acquired at the institute. The institute was founded by PowerChina in 2017 with a $1.45 million investment and recruits students from all over Zambia. It offers free education and training, free housing, and living allowances with the goal of developing the urgently required skilled talents for Zambia in the field of infrastructure construction. 332 students, 10 of whom were trained as technicians by the institute, have thus far graduated, serving as the foundation for both this project and subsequent engineering construction initiatives in Zambia. After completing their training, the majority of them work for the power project, the institute’s dean, Fang Zhi, told ChinAfrica.