For around six hours, Kenya came to a standstill. The lights went out simultaneously in the major cities, along the coast and in numerous inland counties, plunging millions of people back into a daily routine of torches, generators and waiting. It was only during the night that the electricity gradually returned, leaving behind a trail of questions and disruption.
Kenya regained its electricity supply in the small hours of the morning (“and I’m awake”, as Eduardo De Crescenzo might have sung), bringing an end to a blackout that affected much of the country, including Nairobi, the coastal region comprising Mombasa, Kilifi, Malindi and numerous other towns.
The power cut began in the evening and, within a matter of minutes, reports began to multiply on social media. Thousands of people described homes, shops, offices and streets suddenly plunged into darkness. Many businesses, restaurants and accommodation providers also had to rely on emergency generators, whilst those without them simply suspended their services.
The blackout also caused delays to road traffic, with numerous traffic lights out in the main cities, and led to inevitable disruption to communications and services reliant on the electricity grid.
Kenya Power confirmed the widespread power cut, stating that its technicians were working to identify the problem and restore service as quickly as possible. During the night, the company announced that power was gradually being restored across the country’s various regions, with the grid fully restored in the early hours of the morning. The causes of the fault have not yet been disclosed and technical investigations are ongoing.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident for Kenya. In recent years, the country has experienced several large-scale blackouts, often attributed to faults in the high-voltage transmission grid or problems at power generation plants. Each time, the incident reignites the debate over the resilience of the national electricity system, which has seen a rapid rise in energy demand in recent years due to economic development, but which continues to show vulnerabilities when faults occur on the main transmission lines.
For residents and tourists on the coast, however, the situation returned to normal during the night, with no reports of any particular public order issues or emergencies linked to the prolonged power cut. It now remains to be seen what caused the outage and whether measures will be needed to prevent a blackout of similar proportions from happening again.