afrol News, 21 May - Kenya’s Energy Minister, Kiraitu Murungi, has said that only six percent of rural Kenyans have access to electricity.

He said this worrying development has forced the country to go all out in search of “innovative approaches and colossal amounts of financial resources to scale up the rate.”

Kiraitu Murungi also disclosed that Kenya has spent about US $115 million on rural electrification this fiscal year.

He said a total of 1,330 rural electrification projects have been initiated in rural areas. These projects include solar-powered generators supplied to secondary schools in arid and semi arid lands provinces in North-eastern, Eastern, Rift Valley and the Coast.

"Already 34 schools in areas remote from the existing national grid have been supplied with solar electricity under the programme,” Mr Murungi said in a statement.

“The government has accorded top priority to rural electrification in order to attain the target to supply electricity to 20 per cent of rural population by 2010.”

The Energy Minister was optimistic that the newly passed law would no doubt strengthen rural electrification institutional reforms.

“The Energy Act of 2006 provides for the establishment of Rural Electricity Authority (REA) to accelerate supply of electricity to the rural communities,” Mr Murungi noted, disclosing that REA is expected to kick off with effect from July 2007.

By staff writer

© afrol News

Related pages and feature

Current afrol News Top Stories