Kenya, the economic powerhouse of East Africa experienced Tuesday, January 11, 2022 almost a whole day without electricity due to a new blackout. Nothing says that the problem will not repeat itself because the “system remains unstable”, according to Kenya Power spokesperson.
One breakdown, then two, then three. Since December, power outages have followed one another in Kenya and complicated the lives of millions of people. The biggest outage was caused Tuesday, January 11 by the collapse of four electricity pylons near the capital Nairobi, according to the public company Kenya Power. As soon as this problem was solved, others arose the next day on another transmission line causing a second cut. The public company does not rule out further outages due to a system that remains “unstable”, as Gregory Ngahu, spokesperson for Kenya Power, points out to AFP.
In Kenya, most of the electricity is produced by hydropower, geothermal energy and wind power, but electricity prices remain high due in particular to the diesel power stations which make it possible to cover consumption peaks.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government recently announced a 15% reduction in tariffs, eight months before the presidential election scheduled for August 2022. In the meantime, Kenyans have been left without electricity and his electoral promise has been flouted. on social networks. “Maybe (this reduction) will be achieved by not supplying electricity 15% of the time”, quipped a user on Twitter.
This is not the first time that Kenya has faced electricity problems. At the end of 2022, a major transmission line collapsed leading to power rationing in several parts of the country.
In May 2020, the section of a high voltage power line caused a major nationwide outage, but the most unlikely power outage occurred in 2016. It was caused by the fall of a monkey in a transformer. The primate had miraculously survived, but entire regions had gone without power for several hours.