Kenya: President Uhuru Kenyatta and his visiting Rwandese counterpart Paul Kagame have challenged manufacturers to pass on the benefits of lower electricity costs to consumers.
Speaking at Olkaria in Naivasha, Nakuru County during the commissioning of an additional 140MW of geothermal power, the two leaders said the prices of essential commodities must come down with the increased generation of clean and affordable energy.
President Kenyatta promised Kenyans a further reduction in the production cost in the coming months.
He said KenGen is in the process of establishing an Industrial Park in Naivasha where manufacturers would be allowed to establish plants that would benefit from power rates devoid of electricity evacuation costs.
"This will further reduce the cost of production for both local and export produce, and ease the cost of living," he said.
President Kagame said a time had come to have a conversation between government, manufacturers and citizens over how the low-cost of electricity impacts on the consum
The Rwandese president was the chief guest at the occasion marking the final phase of the 240MW geothermal power plant, one of the the largest infrastructures in the country.
Their calls come at time when electricity tariffs in the country have reduced drastically but the cost of goods still remain high.
Speaking at the event, Bidco Oil Chief Executive Vimal Shah said consumers would start benefiting from the reduced costs in the next two to three months.
Last year in October, President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto commissioned the 140 MW Olkaria IV plant that saw the electricity cost go down by an estimated 30 per cent.
Uhuru further announced that by the end of April, 85 per cent of all public primary schools across the country will have been connected to electricity.
"Already 17,551 schools have been powered. Work is in progress in another 3,670 schools. The rest will be solar powered," he said.
He said the initiative would improve learners' performance because they would have more time to study and access e-learning resources with the establishment of computer centres.
The President also said Kenya would soon start exporting electricity to East Africa and that plans are underway to supply Rwanda with power. "The commissioning of the Olkaria V plant will soon be held. I urge our development partners to speed up the financial negotiations for the project," he said.
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Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir said: "The sustainability of geothermal power will make Kenya a competitive world manufacturing centre," he said.
KenGen CEO Albert Mugo said the project took 30 months to complete and plans are underway to construct Olkaria V power plant at the same site. "In the next four years we target to generate some 400MW of clean energy from Olkaria," said the CEO.
Mugo said KenGen has begun sharing geothermal harvesting skills with the neighbouring countries in the East and Central African region. "Rwanda is one of the beneficiaries of the geothermal expertise from Kenya," he said.
Japanese Ambassador to Kenya Tatsushi Terada said his government would continue supporting geothermal development in the country. He said this would in turn help in the development of the northern transport corridor that will link East African countries.
"Japan will support Kenyan's ambitious plan to generate 5,000MW of clean energy and in the process create employment to the youth," said Terada.
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