The government of Kenya reported on Monday that it was gradually restoring power following the country’s third major blackout in four months. This has added to growing discontent with President William Ruto over the deteriorating economic situation and his policies during his 15-month tenure in office.
The blackout affected many parts of the country after 7:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, with Kenya Power, the state-run utility, blaming a “suspected fault affecting the power system.” Many neighborhoods in Nairobi were plunged into darkness, and two terminals at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport also lost power, according to the Kenya Airports Authority.
Kenya generates most of its electricity from renewable resources, including geothermal, wind, and solar. However, old infrastructure, corruption, and illegal connections have made the grid unreliable. Additionally, ever-rising electricity taxes mean that power bills are too expensive for many Kenyans.
Jomo Kenyatta airport is among the busiest hubs in Africa, with millions of passengers every year.
The airport authority said that two of the airport’s four generators had “failed to immediately activate” during the blackout on Sunday evening, despite being tested in the past week.
Video footage shared on social media and broadcast on local television showed passengers finding their way through darkened terminals using the flashlights on their phones. Kenya’s transport minister, Kipchumba Murkomen, said the government would mount an investigation into the cause of the outage.
However, on Monday, Davis Chirchir, the energy and petroleum minister, suggested that the blackout was attributed to an overload on a transmission line in western Kenya.
Mr. Chirchir said that the government would build a new transmission line in partnership with foreign investors and governments in the next 20 months to address the underinvestment in the energy grid. To ease strain on the grid, the authorities will consider rotating power cuts, he said.
Some parts of Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa were still without power as of Monday afternoon — a day before Kenya marks its 60th independence day.
Kenya often experiences power interruptions, but the frequency and scope of the recent outages have prompted widespread concern.
In November, it took engineers almost 10 hours to restore power after an outage affected many parts of the country. That followed a 14-hour blackout in August that paralyzed businesses and affected operations at the Jomo Kenyatta airport.
Mr. Murkomen, the transport minister, responded by firing the managing director of the airport authority and pledged that the situation would not be repeated.
Mr. Ruto has faced criticism and public anger as Kenya’s economic pains have grown. After coming to office in September 2022, he scrapped fuel subsidies and raised taxes, even as he hosted lavish state dinners at home and took dozens of trips abroad.
Until the new transmission lines are built, power outages will continue, Mr. Chirchir warned on Monday.
“It is a challenge that as a country we are really ashamed of and we need to address it,” said Mr. Chirchir.