By: Economic Expert Ali Al-Soleh
Libya’s Electricity Crisis Continues
Once again, our streets and cities are plunged into complete darkness whenever a wave of extreme heat or cold hits, bringing back the electricity crisis that continues to burden citizens without any fundamental solution in sight.
Economic expert Ali Al-Soleh said in a post that the painful reality goes far beyond the simple loss of electricity. It has become a complete disruption of daily life.
The consequences include:
- Businesses and daily activities coming to a halt.
- Shops being forced to close.
- Bakeries being disrupted.
- Water pumps stopping.
- Citizens being forced to seek costly alternative solutions.
- Food and medicine being spoiled.
- Food going bad in refrigerators.
- Medications requiring continuous refrigeration, such as insulin, being affected, creating a direct risk to public health.
The Human Cost of Libya’s Electricity Crisis
Al-Soleh also pointed to the suffering of elderly people and patients.
With temperatures rising inside homes without electricity, the daily hardship becomes particularly severe for patients and children.
The electricity crisis is therefore not simply an inconvenience. It directly affects people’s health, livelihoods, businesses, and ability to carry out their everyday lives.
Billions Spent, Yet the Same Crisis Returns
According to Al-Soleh, one of the greatest sources of frustration among citizens today is the absence of a logical explanation for this persistent failure.
There is no ongoing war or blockade preventing the country from addressing the problem, while billions of dinars and substantial budgets have been allocated over the years under the heading of “power grid development and maintenance.”
Al-Saleh asks:
Where did all those budgets go?
And why do temporary fixes and generators continue to drain resources instead of building strategic power-generation plants and upgrading electricity distribution networks?
A Crisis of Management and Governance
Al-Soleh argues that Libya’s electricity crisis is no longer simply a problem of limited resources or insufficient funding.
In his view, it has become a crisis of management, governance, lack of transparency, and widespread corruption—a situation he warns could threaten the stability and future of the state.
The continued reliance on temporary solutions, he suggests, raises serious questions about how public funds allocated to the electricity sector have been managed and whether they have actually delivered the infrastructure and capacity they were intended to create.
Citizens Need Real Action
Al-Soleh concluded his post by saying that citizens need genuine action beginning with combating corruption, prosecuting those responsible, and recovering public funds that have been lost.
Citizens also need clear timelines for ending this ongoing crisis—not merely statements of apology and repeated justifications.
