Large parts of Kenya were plunged into darkness on Wednesday night following a widespread power outage that disrupted electricity supply across several regions of the country.
The outage, which was first reported shortly after 8:20 p.m., affected Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, Nakuru, Kilifi, Nyeri and several other towns, with residents taking to social media to report losing power almost simultaneously.
The blackout disrupted evening activities in homes and businesses, prompting many Kenyans to seek information online about the cause of the outage and its geographical extent.
In a statement, Kenya Power confirmed the widespread outage, attributing it to a system disturbance that had affected electricity supply across much of the country.
“We wish to inform our esteemed customers that we are experiencing a widespread power outage affecting customers in Nairobi, Coast, Mt Kenya and parts of Central Rift. However, parts of North Rift and Western regions are on supply,” the utility said.
Kenya Power added that its technical teams had been deployed to restore electricity as quickly as possible.
“Our technical teams are working to restore supply to the affected areas as quickly as possible. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience as restoration efforts continue,” the company said.
In a separate update, the utility explained that it had experienced a system disturbance that resulted in the loss of bulk power supply to the affected regions.
“We have experienced a system disturbance that has resulted in loss of bulk supply to the region. Our Technical Teams are troubleshooting in order to get us back to normalcy. We regret the inconvenience caused,” Kenya Power said.
The full cause of the disturbance had not been disclosed by Wednesday night, and it remained unclear when power would be fully restored across all affected areas.
The latest blackout is the latest in a series of major electricity disruptions that have raised concerns about the reliability and resilience of Kenya’s national power grid. Previous nationwide outages have been attributed to transmission line faults, grid disturbances and infrastructure failures, with electricity typically restored progressively as engineers isolate and rectify the underlying problem.
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