India’s state-owned Power Grid Corporation has formally moved into the execution phase of its Kenyan transmission push after incorporating a project company in Nairobi to deliver a KSh40.2 billion electricity corridor.
- •The firm has established Mwanga Transmission Company Limited, a special purpose vehicle registered in Kenya on 21 April, to implement the Kenya Independent Power Transmission Project, a public-private partnership with the state-run Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO).
- •Power Grid Corporation disclosed the development to the National Stock Exchange of India and the BSE on 22 April.
- •The vehicle is jointly owned by Africa50, which holds a 60% majority stake, and Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, which owns the remaining 40%.
Africa50, an infrastructure investor backed by African governments and the African Development Bank (AfDB), serves as the financial anchor of the consortium, while Powergrid will provide engineering and transmission expertise.
The project sits within Kenya’s broader effort to expand and modernize its electricity transmission network, which has struggled with bottlenecks as generation capacity grows faster than grid infrastructure.
The public-private partnership model allows the government, through KETRACO, to retain oversight of the national grid while outsourcing financing and construction to a hybrid of development finance and foreign technical operators.
The incorporation of the special purpose vehicle follows the signing of a project agreement in late 2025 between KETRACO, Africa50 and Powergrid. That agreement set out the framework for the transmission line investment, which is designed to strengthen grid stability and improve power evacuation capacity across key demand centers.
The transmission lines on the horizon include the 180-kilometre 400kV Lessos–Loosuk double-circuit line, which will provide an alternative evacuation route for up to 300 megawatts from the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant and support geothermal development in the North Rift. The second line is the 72-kilometre 220kV Kibos–Kakamega–Musaga line, extending high-voltage transmission into Western Kenya, stabilizing supply and supporting growing industrial demand across the region.
Under the structure, Mwanga Transmission Company will function as a ring-fenced entity responsible solely for financing, building and operating the designated transmission assets. This SPV model isolates project risk from the parent institutions and allows lenders to assess cash flows at the project level rather than relying on sovereign balance sheets.
For Powergrid, the Kenyan venture represents part of a wider strategy to expand beyond its domestic transmission base into emerging markets where grid expansion is accelerating. The company has increasingly used subsidiary structures to participate in overseas public-private partnerships.
