Why KPLC's Continued Monopoly Will Cost Us More Than Country Debt

After releasing last week's blog on Why Starlink's Raid on Safaricom Turf is Case Study Stuff, my inbox was inundated with appeals for a similar story on the Kenya Power and Lighting Company—KPLC. I was cagey about it until the night of Friday, the 30th of August, 2024 when KPLC literally endorsed the request via a nationwide blackout. This outage shut off several economic possibilities and plans for Kenyans. Granted, it could be an act of sabotage but more likely an internally induced situation that will play out or will be understood shortly. These outages are just as destructive to the economy as typhoons and hurricanes are, if anything, we must equally name them just as these winds are named. Friday's could be named blackout Medusa. The next one will be named after a senior energy ministry official, perhaps.

All power producers, independent or not, operating in Kenya connect to the national grid via KPLC. And decades back, this company also generated and transmitted power before KenGen and KETRACO were hived off the behemoth. That act was envisaged to create much needed singularity of focus on core business. KenGen was meant to focus on power generation, KETRACO on transmission and KPLC was mandated with last mile power distribution. My caginess to write as overwhelmingly demanded, stems from an experience in 2013 I'd love to believe was mere coincidence rather than by design. That year, I penned an article in the Business Daily enumerating the causes of KPLC's inefficiencies. After that write-up, I experienced a week-long blackout at home. Let's just leave it at that.

Energy in any form is big business around the world. A nationwide blackout could potentially cause power-dependent entities unnecessary entanglements in contractual breaches from delivery failures. As shared last week, any entity with a 50% or more in market share finds itself in a position where having subdued competition, sees no need to invest further in customer care improvements but to let shareholders instead have more juice, after all, where will you go? This is where we are with our utility distributing monopoly. Multiple power producers have not solved the consumer's struggle in finding affordable power. But that is for another day.

KPLC is the elephant in the room and doesn't need a big solution. Just one tiny bee is enough. In April of 2021 I wrote that in comparison , "the male African elephant weighs as much as 14,000 pounds or just over 6,000 kilograms. In contrast, the bee weighs 0.00025 pounds. This means that up to 56 million bees are needed to match the jumbo's weight. A single bee hive has up to 50 thousand bees—another 1,120 hives needed to match the weight of the bee-shy giant. A bee is the only minute creature known to instantly scare an elephant and causes it to attain full flight within 5 seconds. The KPLC just needs a tiny competitor or two. The market will readily embrace them.

In its monopolistic position, blackouts are a given and we shall be forced to pay for dilapidated infrastructure hidden in higher charges and will continue to fund inefficiencies to amounts that match up to our corporate and individual bank loans put together. And over a generational lifetime, the cumulative monetary figure attributable to monopolistic larggese could match our national debt. Your power supplier is adding to your cost of living over and above the skewed power generation contracts that only serve to make us subjects of capitalistic "Royalty" hiding behind tightly crafted contracts, now killing our economy by scaring away manufacturers to cheaper bases across our borders.

We are headed into a future powered by electric vehicles. Imagine what life can be if your car, phone and laptop are out of charge whilst out in the middle of nowhere. And my beef is not with KPLC but its continued protection in a free market economy. It warranted protection at its nascent stage whilst still producing and distributing power. Today, demand often outstrips supply and the time has come for other competitors to plug the demand and efficiency void.

Our future cannot be powered by Reddy Kilowatt nostalgia but only by being real and alive to the present challenges going into the future. Ironically , KPLC badly needs a competitor's hand to help shape it into a futuristic outfit capable of saving the nation from blackout-related risks. The government need not force a referendum on ending KPLC's monopoly, for any further delay makes us believe that indeed, it is a free cream station for any government in power. Now you leak it away while asking us, "Mta do?" Poor us, I had a child in the neighborhood that night scream when the blackout occurred. Nightmarish stuff! Sponsored by? ... of course the continued monopoly.