---
title: "In Aden, Where Power Comes Two to Six Hours a Day, the Dialysis Machine Waits Too"
description: "Yemen’s southern capital lives by the grid’s whims: children play in the street, men go to the sea, and hospitals run on donated fuel"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-05T11:01:07Z
modified: 2026-10-05T22:16:26Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/in-aden-where-power-comes-two-to-six-hours-a-day-the-dialysi-5a5228
language: en
tags: ["yemen", "health", "infrastructure", "war", "energy", "mideast"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# In Aden, Where Power Comes Two to Six Hours a Day, the Dialysis Machine Waits Too

*Yemen’s southern capital lives by the grid’s whims: children play in the street, men go to the sea, and hospitals run on donated fuel*

By Jan Sokol · October 5, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/in-aden-where-power-comes-two-to-six-hours-a-day-the-dialysi-5a5228

## In brief

- An IMF assessment published in 2026 found Aden receiving only two to six hours of electricity a day
- Before the war only about 55% of Yemenis had electricity from any source, among the lowest rates in the region
- UNDP found more than 7,000 students and teachers in Aden working in dark, hot classrooms during power cuts
- In 2025 the WHO supplied about 4.33 million litres of fuel to 177 Yemeni health facilities to keep generators running
- According to the WHO, more than half of Yemen’s homes rely on solar power in some form

Aden is a port that has always had heavy, wet summers. What has changed is how the day gets measured. The hours no longer follow the sun. They follow the grid. When the current goes, the fans and air conditioners stop, and everything that relied on them has to be rearranged: sleep, homework, the cold inside a refrigerator. In a report from the city published on October 5, Al Jazeera followed those rearrangements from the bedroom to the shoreline to the dialysis ward.

## An old shortage

Yemen’s darkness is older than its war. Before the fighting began, only about 55 percent of Yemenis had electricity from any source, according to Al Jazeera, one of the lowest shares in the Middle East and North Africa. Since 2015, damaged infrastructure, fuel shortages and ageing generation and distribution systems have made a weak supply weaker. Aden’s power stations shut down again and again. Al Jazeera adds that higher insurance premiums on tankers bringing fuel to the city have reportedly made things worse.

The International Monetary Fund has put numbers on it. Its [2025 Article IV consultation on Yemen](https://www.elibrary.imf.org/downloadpdf/view/journals/002/2026/080/article-A001-en.pdf), published this year, found that Aden was getting just two to six hours of electricity a day because of structural weaknesses and fuel shortages. The Fund’s description of the system reads like a ledger written by a satirist. Old fossil-fuel plants, some of them running on expensive diesel, push the cost of generation close to US$0.20 per kilowatt-hour, while the average tariff stays below US$0.03. Nearly half of the power is lost in transmission and distribution. Only about a third of what is generated is ever paid for, and most of the unpaid bills belong to the public sector. In effect, the state’s own offices are among the customers who don’t pay the state.

A reflection, not a finding: a government’s reach can be judged by how long it keeps the lights on in the city it governs from. This week the government in Aden [announced an offensive](https://rews.cc/a/yemeni-family-flees-houthi-offensive-as-army-claims-1-540-re-ed1dc5) to retake territory from the Houthis. Its own capital gets power for part of the day at best.

The year has had its own cycle. Al Jazeera [reported in June](https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/6/8/homes-turned-into-ovens-millions-of-yemenis-swelter-amid-heat-blackouts) that Saudi support in January, when it was cool and demand was low, gave Aden almost uninterrupted electricity for the first time in years. Then the heat came back and the supply collapsed. That same month, [The New Arab reported](https://www.newarab.com/news/aden-hadramut-energy-crisis-deepens-southern-yemen) cuts of around 20 hours a day, with residents protesting at night.

## The second day

After sunset a second day begins. Homes and shops go dark except for small lamps run on batteries or solar panels. Nobody knows how long a blackout will last, or how long the power will stay when it returns. In summer the temperature climbs toward 40 degrees Celsius, and residents who spoke to Al Jazeera in the middle of the year described homes that had become close to unbearable. Nightfall does not always bring relief from the heat.

> “Sometimes the power comes back while we are asleep, so we wake up to use it. Our lives have become tied to when electricity comes and goes.”

For that woman’s family, the length of an outage is the smaller part of it. What matters is what goes wrong: children who can’t sleep, food going off in warm refrigerators, housework put on hold.

When it gets too hot indoors, Youssef goes down to the coast. The sea used to be for leisure, he told Al Jazeera. Now it is where people go to escape the heat. “There is no fan and no air conditioning, and the humidity makes the heat worse, so we come to the sea.” In the evenings young men and families line the waterfront, some in the water and some just sitting and waiting for the city to cool. Then he goes back home. “Sometimes we get back and the power is still out, and we start waiting all over again,” he said.

## Childhood moves outdoors

Mohammed, Saeed and Abdullah have grown up with blackouts as an ordinary part of life. When the house heats up, they go out into the street. “It gets hot inside the house, so we come down and play in the street,” one of the boys said. “We play football or sit with our friends. Outside is better when the electricity is off.”

The problem follows them to school. The United Nations Development Programme found that more than 7,000 students and teachers in Aden were working in dark, airless classrooms during power cuts. Solar systems installed at eight schools and an education office have eased this. One teacher said some students had fainted from the heat. At home, studying for exams can depend on a rechargeable lamp, or on a small solar set for families that own one.

## Where nothing can be postponed

A household can wait out a blackout. A hospital cannot. Operating theatres, intensive care units, laboratories, medicine refrigerators and dialysis machines all need uninterrupted power. The World Health Organization says repeated outages disrupt lifesaving services across Yemen, so facilities patch together grid electricity, generators and solar power. In 2025, according to the WHO, it delivered about 4.33 million litres of fuel to 177 health facilities around the country to keep generators and essential equipment going.

Zeina Ahmed is a kidney patient. In the Al Jazeera report she watches her blood run through tubes into a dialysis machine.

> “For people at home, a power cut means heat and darkness. For us here, the first thing we think about is whether we will be able to have our dialysis or not.”

“I come to the hospital knowing that I need this session,” she said. “If it is delayed, I keep thinking about when I will get it and whether the machines will continue to work.”

## The roof as power station

After years without a reliable grid, panels, batteries and generators are now an ordinary sight on Yemeni rooftops, powering the homes, shops and schools that can pay for them. The WHO has said that [more than half of Yemen’s homes](https://www.emro.who.int/yemen/news/harnessing-solar-power-a-lifeline-for-yemens-hospitals.html) depend on solar power in some form, and health facilities are moving the same way. In November 2025 the agency [announced a project](https://www.emro.who.int/media/news/who-strengthens-the-energy-resilience-of-yemeni-health-facilities-with-support-from-the-kuwait-fund-for-arab-economic-development.html), funded by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, to put solar systems and battery storage into six health facilities so that operating theatres, intensive care units and vaccine cold chains can keep running.

Six facilities, in a country whose hospitals needed fuel for 177. The state cannot collect its own bills, so in practice each family produces its own power. A family with money buys large panels and big batteries and runs several appliances. A family without it may have enough for one light, one fan or a phone charger, and then it waits for the grid to come back.