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The country heavily relies on hydropower, which is projected to be increasingly exposed to large climate fluctuations. Électricité de France (EDF), our end-user seeks to better characterise the impacts of climate variability and future change on hydropower generation in Lake Malawi and the Shire river basin by addressing the following questions:

• Can past data help understand and attribute events which have a significant impact on river flow & water availability (like the recent years droughts)?
• Will future hydrological cycle of Lake Malawi and River Shire be changed due to climate change, and how?
• Can seasonal forecasts help anticipate such events a season ahead to better inform hydro-power plants and water resource management?

These issues related to the Lake Malawi and the Shire river catchment are shared by other river catchments in Southern Africa, and thus are relevant to the private energy sector but also to climate policy development in Southern Africa. This service is relevant to better assess the impacts of climate variability and change on energy production, on country-specific energy mix strategy (mainly hydropower, but an outlook extended for wind and solar will also be included) and on the design of renewable energy infrastructures.

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