Imagine losing one minute of electricity in every 7-10 days, or seven minutes once every two months: another planet, another century.

We are lucky to get through three days without losing seven minutes of power. And, actually, those cuts tend to be several hours each. The average, say Kenya Power is now ‘just’ 100 minutes per month, so only 30 times more power cutting than UK companies manage. Yet, 30 times more matters.

Even successive rounds of adding more and more energy capacity at really a fairly rapid rate never seem to dent our power cuts, or shortages either. Of course demand rises, and so has rural electrification, but neither of those have gone so crazy that we couldn’t build enough capacity.

Yet people get solar kits on instalment plans now to charge their phones through it all. But how can we keep our professional staff online without spending Sh100,000+ per employee for generators or invertors? That multiplied, say, by half of some three million taxpaying employees, makes a new employment investment of Sh15 billion.

Read more: Business Daily