Persistent power blackouts are costing Nyahururu its students’ futures and its businesses’ livelihoods — and Kenya Power owes the town better.
By Wanene Zipporah Nyawira
Nyahururu is being left behind, and the reason is embarrassingly basic: the lights keep going out.
As a student at Laikipia University, I experience the consequences directly. Research stalls, online learning materials become inaccessible, assignments go unfinished and examination preparation is repeatedly disrupted. Frequent, prolonged power outages do not merely inconvenience students — they actively undermine academic performance at a time when young people can least afford setbacks.
The damage extends well beyond campus. Nyahururu’s small businesses — cybercafés, salons, hotels, retail shops — absorb financial losses with every outage. Owners cannot plan, cannot serve customers reliably and cannot grow when their most basic operational requirement disappears without warning. Ordinary residents fare no better, enduring daily disruption in their homes with no reliable indication of when supply will be restored.
The question is straightforward: how are students expected to excel and businesses to thrive when electricity — the foundation of both — remains this unreliable?
Kenya Power and the relevant authorities must urgently investigate the root causes of these recurring blackouts, implement lasting technical solutions and, at the very minimum, communicate scheduled interruptions in advance. Residents deserve more than reactive apologies and temporary fixes. They deserve a power supply that works.
Electricity is not a luxury. It is infrastructure, and infrastructure is a right. Nyahururu is a growing town with real potential — but that potential cannot be realised in the dark.
Kenya Power must act. The town is waiting.
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