Page 11 - AfrElec Week 41 2021
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Kenya defaults on $178mn
Arror, Kimwarer dams loan
due to Italian bank
SOUTH AFRICA
KENYA has defaulted on a KES19.6bn ($178mn) dam loan on May 9.
loan for two controversial hydroelectric power According to Business Daily, up to KES-
dam projects, having failed to make the first 19.8bn was paid in advance to various offshore
instalment payments to the Italian bank in May, firms for the Arror and Kimwarer projects
Business Daily reports. despite the dams not being built.
Intesa Sanpaolo says that Kenya failed to In July 2019, former treasury cabinet secre-
make the payment amid investigations into bil- tary Henry Rotich was charged in this regard
lions of shillings in foreign banks never wired to alongside other senior officials with conspiring
government accounts. to defraud the public.
Treasury documents tabled in Parliament
show Kenya was due to pay the first instalment
(KES11bn) lent to the Arror dam on May 18 and
an initial repayment of the KES8.63bn Kimwarer
South Africa starts week with new
round of electricity blackouts
SOUTH Africa had to endure a series of elec- at Majuba power station today provided some
SOUTH AFRICA tricity blackouts as the week started with its state relief; however, this was insufficient to curb the
power utility announcing over the weekend that extensive use of emergency reserves.”
it had implemented load-shedding on its system, On Monday, 11 October, South Africans
due to breakdowns and planned maintenance at took to social media to report outages after their
its power plants. turn at load-shedding had passed. The problem
It said blackouts would continue during the was especially rife in the economic heartland of
next week until 05:00 on Thursday, 14 October South Africa, Gauteng.
and would take place 24 hours a day. The City of Ekurhuleni in Gauteng tweeted
On Thursday, after 77 days without that it had sent out teams to substations to
load-shedding, Eskom announced that it would determine why the power had not returned. In
resume stage 2. Johannesburg, the city’s utility City Power said it
Eskom said in a statement that breakdowns suspected overloading on the electricity system
amounted to 14,760 MW, while planned main- after load-shedding had resulted in the outages.
tenance has taken 5,200 MW of capacity out of In the capital, the local municipality issued
the system. There were breakdowns of a gener- a statement indicating that Eskom’s load-shed-
ating unit each at Kusile, Komati and Hendrina ding would “significantly disrupt” the electrical
power stations. infrastructure of the city. It said load-shedding
“Whilst still recovering four units at Tutuka, can lead to the tripping of electricity grids and
which had experienced conveyor belt failures, power surges due to the overloading of the sys-
the fleet suffered a cluster of boiler tube leaks tem, especially when it ends.
within a short period of time,” Eskom said. Economists had warned that the latest round
Eskom said the load-shedding was also nec- of load-shedding was further bad news for
essary to address other additional risks in the South Africa’s struggling economy.
generation fleet. “The return of a generating unit
Week 41 14•October•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P11
