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Johannesburg — Large parts of Kenya went dark Sunday night as the country was rocked by its third national blackout in as many months. The electricity failure began before 8 p.m. local time Sunday, with large outages still reported across the country Monday morning. Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, a major regional hub, saw two of its terminals lose power for several hours on Sunday evening.

Kipchumba Murkomen, the Minister of Transportation, paid a visit to the airport and announced his plan to formally ask the National Police Service to look into potential instances of sabotage and concealment.

Kenya Power, a national provider, announced on social media that their network was in a “stable condition.” However, due to a sudden increase in energy demand, there were multiple generation trips causing widespread power outages. The company did not specify the cause of the surge in demand.

The Kenyan Energy Minister, Davis Chirchir, explained that the sudden power outage was due to a power line being overloaded. He also announced that there will be planned and limited power cuts in areas with high electricity usage.

Load-shedding is the process of intentionally cutting off electricity to various locations on a predetermined schedule, for a set amount of time each day, in order to alleviate strain on the overall power system.

After a previous blackout in November, it took workers 12 hours to repair the power in multiple regions of the country.

On August 25, the country experienced its most severe power outage lasting nearly 24 hours. Kenya Power attributed the outage to a malfunction at a major wind farm supplying the grid, while the wind farm operators blamed the national supplier. However, the exact cause of the outage is still unclear.

During the August blackout, Murkomen assured that there would not be another power outage at the Nairobi airport, which he identified as a crucial national facility.

Since assuming office in September 2022, President William Ruto has implemented tax increases and reduced fuel subsidies in Kenya.

Many Kenyans expressed their frustration on social media about the overnight power outage, citing the high cost of fuel as the reason for significant financial losses for businesses in the country.

Source: cbsnews.com