Kenya mired in energy crisis, seeks investment
August 13th, 2008 | by admin |By Daniel Wallis
NAIROBI, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Kenya is suffering an energycrisis and desperately needs to boost “dismal” privateinvestment in the sector, the east African country’s primeminister warned on Wednesday.
Like many nations on the world’s poorest continent, Kenyahas been battered by record oil prices this year that pushed uptransport and food costs and ate into government spending plans.
“Let us today sound the alarm …. We are in the midst ofwhat is nothing less than a national crisis. Every stakeholdermust join the search for solutions,” Prime Minister Raila Odingatold a meeting of the Petroleum Institute of East Africa.
His government alone could not generate the investment theregion’s biggest economy so badly needed, Odinga said.
“Public-private partnerships are therefore indispensable inmobilising resources for our common goals of poverty alleviationand job creation,” he said. “Meeting those goals is crucial tocreating both human and political security.”
Odinga said he was astonished that private investment inKenya’s energy sector was “so dismal … despite it being such acritical and lucrative sector of our economy.”
New laws were needed, he added, to provide sovereignguarantees for public private partnerships that would ensureconfidence and bring in bigger investments.
Kenya gets 60 percent of its electricity from dams, a thirdis fuel-generated and the rest comes from geothermal — but thetotal is not enough.
