President William Ruto now says the government has been forced into daily load-shedding, shutting off some parts of the country from power supply between 5pm and 10pm, to keep the national grid stable and cope with the growing power demand.

The President, who addressed Kenyans living in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday night, said the country needed over Ksh.1 trillion to boost its power capacity to at least 5,000 megawatts to spur growth.

“Today in Kenya, between 5pm and 10pm, we have to do load-shedding. We have to shut off some areas to power other areas because our energy is insufficient. One data center requires 1,000 megawatts, but we only have 2,300 megawatts,” said President Ruto.

The President explained the plan to ramp up power production to meet the growing domestic and industrial needs, now standing at 3,158 megawatts at peak hours.

“If we have to industrialize and engage in manufacturing, we need a minimum of 10,000 megawatts of energy. We need to build at least 50 mega dams: High Grand Falls Dam, Soin Koru Dam,” said Ruto.

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The Head of State hinted at possible ways of raising the more than Ksh.1 trillion budget required to fund the project.

“We need Ksh.1.2 trillion, that is just about maybe 10 to 12 billion dollars. We can raise that money. Si tumeraise hii ya affordable housing? Ksh.600 billion. We have raised it. But this one, we can raise it even without any levy, tutatumia akili tu,” said President Ruto.

Kenya’s power supplier, Kenya Power, has backed the President’s position, saying the grid has in recent days been overwhelmed, especially after sunset when solar power is lost and the national grid experiences a drop in supply from existing wind-power producers.

Without giving a specific time when the load-shedding began, Kenya Power, which has about 10 million customers, said the downtime at night has led to scheduled rationing.

Power rationing in Kenya

“Kenya’s appetite for electricity has reached a new high, reporting a peak demand of 2,411.98MW and the highest-ever daily energy consumption of 44,122.60MWh recorded on October 24, 2025,” said KenGen.

“No load-shedding was reported across the national grid during the record-breaking demand period,” added KenGen.