Power lines connecting the east African states of Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia are expected to be completed within the next three years, helping improve supplies and power trading, a senior Kenyan official said on Thursday.
A high-voltage line between Ethiopia and Kenya will be ready in 2017, a Kenya-Uganda link will be complete by the end of 2016, and a Kenya-Tanzania connection will be working in 2018, said Joseph Njoroge, principal secretary at Kenya’s Energy and Petroleum Ministry.
The Kenya-Ethiopia link will be a 500 kilovolt (kV) line, while the lines to Uganda and Tanzania will be 400kV. The line to Uganda would then connect Rwanda and Burundi. All the states, except for Ethiopia, are part of the East African Community trade bloc.
"In another two to three years, we should be having interconnections of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania," Mr Njoroge told a regional power conference.
"We would expect that with such interconnections, we should take advantage of the huge renewable resources that we have in this region," Mr Njoroge said.
