Kenya has completed a successful trial to transmit 50 megawatts of electricity from Ethiopia to Tanzania through its national grid, a key step in the region’s push for integrated power markets.
- •The electricity flowed through Kenya’s 400-kV Suswa–Isinya transmission line, operated by the state-owned Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (KETRACO), which saw its load rise from 225MW to 262MW during the trial.
- •The test comes months after a December 2024 blackout that paralyzed much of Kenya and was blamed on a fault in the Kenya–Tanzania interconnection.
- •Officials later said the fault stemmed from instability on the cross-border corridor, which forms part of the Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP), an initiative to facilitate energy trading among 13 countries.
The corridor now connects Ethiopia to Tanzania through Kenya, forming one of the region’s most strategic transmission paths. The infrastructure was financed by the National Treasury along with development lenders including the World Bank, African Development Bank, French Development Agency, and European Investment Bank.
Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi previously acknowledged that regional interconnectivity had made the grid more complex and vulnerable, but said outages had become less frequent. Another September blackout was linked to a trip at the Suswa substation, which is also tied to Ethiopia via a high-capacity 500kV line.
Kenya currently imports about 200MW of electricity from Ethiopia, primarily obtained from hydroelectric sources, and could eventually earn transit fees for wheeling power southward. The Tanzania interconnector extends to Arusha and is designed to eventually link up with Zambia’s grid, bridging East and Southern Africa.