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Kenya's reign as the largest economy in East Africa may become a thing of the past if it cannot source cheaper energy as all its neighbours develop oil and gas reserves that Kenya does not have. The country is currently living through severe power shortages caused by drought and its dependency on hydropower, put in place to reduce its need for expensive imported oil. The country has also pushed hard to try to discover oil reserves of its own. However, efforts by the 11 foreign firms looking for crude oil in 19 out of 38 Kenyan blocks thought to hold promise of oil are yet to bear fruit. In fact, according to the Ministry of Energy, no license has been issued to oil exploring companies this year compared to 14 issued in 2008. Ministry officials say the global financial meltdown may be responsible for squeezing out venture financing for oil exploration. Currently, Kenya has no recorded oil and gas reserves, and the mineral deposits are not substantial. By contrast, Tanzania has a significant gas deposit which is now being used as the principal fuel for five gas turbine electricity generators in Dar es Salaam. The gas fields are medium-sized by international standards, but will last for the next 20 years. Songas, the company converting the gas to electricity, is contributing 180 megawatts (MW) of power to the national grid; that is 30 per cent of the total energy requirements for Tanzania. And with a generation cost of about 5.5 US cents per unit, Songas is the cheapest thermal power generation available in East Africa, giving Tanzania two decades ahead of relative comparative advantage in the form of cheaper and more reliable electricity than its neighbours. The country has already saved over US$ 1.8 billion by avoiding the expensive oil-fired generation since it began commercial oil production in 2004. In neighboring Uganda, significant oil deposits have now been discovered in the Western part of the country and commercial production is set to start in 3 years time. The oil fields have reserves of 100 million to 300 million barrels, with a capacity to extract 12,000 barrels a day. Experts say Uganda’s ability to generate cheap oil would translate into cheaper power, which would make it the most competitive destination for manufacturers within the region. Kenya is further set to lose out in the business of refining imported oil for Uganda, when its neighbour builds its own refinery with a processing capacity of 4,000 barrels a day. At the moment, Uganda imports 100 per cent of its petroleum through Kenya, primarily via pipeline, but also by road. With no oil field discovery of its own in sight, Kenya has been trying for the last three years to conclude an agreement with Sudan to import 500,000 barrels of crude oil a month, to hold costs down. It's only other hope of not falling behind as the region's top economy lies in alternative energy sources. The country has the highest geothermal potential in Africa, but the capital costs are huge. Other options remain wind and solar power. |
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Water can be made to go a lot farther if it is harvested and used on it's way from sky to ground. Traditionally, the Turkana people in Kenya have planted sorghum in flood waters, to extract a crop at speed before the water seeps away. Other traditional forms of water harvesting include guttering to collect the rain that falls on roofs into cisterns or tanks. A UNEP report found that Kenya’s annual water runoff is 20bn cubic meters, and concluded that Nairobi has the potential to harvest almost 10 million cubic meters of water each year if rain harvesting measures were in place across the city’s rooftops, roads, open grounds and forest areas. In the west, advanced water harvesting has seen countries such as Japan and Scandanavia introduce harvesting systems on paved hillsides and airport runways, as well as subterranean reservoirs, normally computer controlled. The Japanese also construct rock filled containers beneath the ground to serve as artificial aquifers into which intercepted rain water is directed for subsequent pumping. In the Middle East, instead of using tank cisterns, researchers say hand-dug mortared subterranean vaults are used for water harvesting. The need for Kenya to now adopt more diligent water harvesting is great. According to UNEP, the country's renewable freshwater per capita is now down to 647 cubic meters from 2000 in the 1960s. Researchers point to pits, trenches, dug wells; hand pumps, recharge wells and shafts, and lateral shafts with bore wells as ways of improving water harvesting. Recharge pits constructed 1 to 2 meters wide and 3 meters deep and back filled with boulders, gravels and coarse sand are enough to collect water for a family that uses 3 cubic meters of water. Harvested water needs to be disinfected for drinking, but can often be used directly for sanitation and irrigation. |
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Who needs to build power stations? Kenya, with its long sunshine hours, enjoys enough solar power to supply the whole world's power hundreds of times over. Yet, it is Germany, with only a fraction of Kenya's sunshine, that now leads the way in solar power. The European country was two years ago producing 3830 Megawatts of solar power a year – more than three times Kenya's total power consumption of 1050 Megawatts. Undeterred by its relatively sunless climate, Germany has regulated that new buildings must be equipped with photovoltiac panels. Further south, France offers grants to householders to install solar panels, and if consumers create more power than they need they can sell the extra electricity back to the national grid – so that they make money on their free power. However, studies show that the potential for solar power is hugely greater in Africa than in Europe. Africa leads the world in the number of sunshine hours, followed by the Middle East and Australia. One Mediterranean University study reported that many regions of Kenya received an average of 10 hours of sun a day. And unlike oil, with its volatile pricing, and hydropower that can be rendered redundant by drought in the world's driest continent, Kenya always gets sun. |
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Water is a resource in short supply globally. The UK has had to deal with drought. Areas such as Queensland, Australia deal with chronic problems of water shortage. Yet many countries have resolved the problem by managing water supplies so that water is used more than once. A popular (and true) anecdote in London - which faces the challenge of keeping 13 million people in water across an area of just 659 square miles - is that every drop of water in the city is drunk five times. The city's Thames River has water treatment plants along its banks that recycle the city's waste water into clean water. By contrast, Kenya with its vast 23.2 trillion water reserves, still has a quarter of its 36 million population without access to water, clean or contaminated. If basic water harvesting and recycling were introduced in Kenya as part of the type of Water Management Hierarchy programmes now in place in countries such as Singapore, Israel and the UK, the country would have more than sufficient water for its population, and for its agricultural industry, which currently uses more than three-quarters of the country's water supplies. With multiple use, the 100 billion litres a day of water available for Nairobi would be sufficient to achieve the UN benchmark of 8333 litres a day per person. At present, Nairobeans currently get about 6000 litres per day per family, and much of this water is now contaminated. Aaccording to AMREF, 70 percent of hospital visits in East Africa are caused by consumption of contaminated water.
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