Kenya begins construction of Lake Turkana windfarm

May 13 , 2015 From Ventures Africa, we’re told that work has commenced on the construction of the largest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa. The farm will be located on the eastern part of Kenya’s Lake Turkana’ it is a private and public sector joint venture and will cost close to $1 billion. The development is likely to be completed in 2017.

With economies in Sub-Saharan Africa posting GDP annual growth rates of 5 percent in the past 10 years, the World Bank and other International organizations have said that mega-infrastructure like the farm is exactly what Africa wants in order to unlock the continent’s economic prosperity.

The Lake Turkana Wind Power project is no new idea, it was initially envisioned towards the close of the 1990s, but has repeatedly been stalled by political and national issues which thankfully, have now all been resolved.

Standard Bank assisted with arranging financing for

the Turkana power plant and East Africa head of power and infrastructure, Kwame Parker, in speaking about the challenges facing the project, is quoted as saying to the Wall Street Journal “At Turkana you get literally one of the best winds you can get in the world, but almost everything else is hard,”

Let’s hope that going forward, everything else is easy