With support from the World Bank and ESMAP, Kenya Power brought electricity to 150,000 urban poor households Harun Mwangi and his team were at have access to electricity. The problem is in one year a loss. Working in Kenya’s urban that it is illegal, unreliable, and unsafe. slum areas in 2012 and 2013, they In poor areas of Nairobi, such as the Success was due to a had assumed that people would informal se lements of Mathare, Kibera, community-centric and Kayole, electric fires and deaths by want what they—as representa ves approach that marketed electrocu on are common. of Kenya Power, the na onal u lity— the advantages of cheap, were offering: safe, legal electric Why then, would these communi es legal power in slum areas power. resist Kenya Power’s a empts to bring in safe power, par cularly when the legal ESMAP’s knowledge Instead, they found resistance. connec ons were no more expensive exchanges with other “For two years, we struggled. The cus- than the illegal ones? As the u lity countries helped Kenya tomers were just not coming,” says Mr. found, the answer lay in the need to Power shape this Mwangi, at the me the project manag- involve the communi es, and build successful approach er for Kenya Power’s slum electrifica on trust. program. “When we came in [to these The lack of trust had built up over many communi es], people said they didn’t years, as the u lity worked fruitlessly to want power—that they already had fight the cartels that were illegally power.” tapping into its lines and selling stolen Over 2 million people are es mated to electricity. Kenya Power would come live in informal se lements in Kenya’s into these communi es and tear down urban areas. Unlike in poor rural areas, the illegal wires. A few days later, they people in urban poor communi es o en would be up again. At other mes, it would try to restrict the amount of power going into en re areas, in the hopes of reducing the , only to find that paying customers had been cut off. As Kenya Power worked to bring power to informal se lements, the World Bank and the Harun Mwangi Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid provided support by offering a subsidy for each former Project Manager Kenya Power household connec on a er it is independently verified. This not only made the connec ons Slum Electrification Program affordable, but also created a sense of ownership among those who had the legal connec- ons. S ll, progress was slow. By early 2014, despite over two years of work, only 3,000 households had been connected. “We realized we had to take a different approach,” said Mwangi. Kenya Power had started to work with the Kenya Informal Se lements Improvement Program (KISIP), a government program with a wide-ranging network in Kenya’s slum areas, and energy and urban development experts from the World Bank. Together, this group mapped out the country’s informal se lements and “segmented” them, iden fying areas that would be most recep ve to engagement with Kenya Power. In May 2014, ESMAP organized a “South-South” knowledge exchange in Nairobi that focused on successful case studies from around the world of bringing electricity to urban poor communi es. Over 50 Kenya Power staff came to the event, to hear about the experiences of electricity distribu on companies from Brazil (Rio LIGHT), Colombia (Empresas Públicas de Medellín - EPM), and South Africa (ESKOM). Also present were representa ves from KISIP, UN Habitat, and NGOs working on improving services in Nairobi’s slums. According to par cipants, the week-long event changed many minds within Kenya Power IMAGES about what was possible, and what would be needed for success. Front & Back Cover— ©Mediabase Productions Pages 2, 3—©Mits Mothashi / World Bank “This was the point where we acknowledged that our nated as part of a larger $330 million World Bank energy assump on that customers would want power was errone- project to help Kenya Power expand and modernize the ous,” said Mwangi. “You need to engage the people on the country’s electricity sector. ground. Colombia had gone through the same process. Brazil As part of the community-based approach, Kenya Power had gone through the same process.” decided to stop confron ng the cartels selling illegal power. Approaches that put the needs of the community first had Instead, they would try to shrink their market. been used successfully in other countries to extend electrici- “We stopped figh ng with them,” said Mary Njirani, Kenya ty services. For example, in São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, Power Marke ng Officer for Nairobi North. “We stopped Brazil, the local u li es had recruited a small army of volun- pulling down the wires.” Instead, she said, Kenya Power teers to go door-to-door in slum areas to listen to residents’ approached the leaders of “clusters” within each informal concerns. This contributed to a process that brought safe, se lement. “We started with the few that wanted [our legal connec ons to over 1.4 million households in those power].” ci es. Star ng with just a few clusters and leaders, word spread Kenya Power’s new strategy included targe ng recep ve quickly among the communi es that Kenya Power’s offer communi es and their leaders, focusing on marke ng the was genuine—cheaper and much safer than the illegal alter- safety and affordability of the legal connec ons, making na ve. Soon, other clusters were not wai ng for Kenya up-front charges payable by installment, and waving the Power to come to them—they were pe oning the u lity requirement for some paperwork for the connec ons. directly. Thanks to a GPOBA subsidy, combined with a World Bank IDA grant and Kenya Power’s own resources, end-users under the In the wake of this ini al success came the most important program pay only 1,160 Kenya Shillings (US$11.60) for a new change—full buy-in by Kenya Power’s top leadership in the connec on—compared to 150,000 Kenya Shillings for regular community-based, non-confronta onal approach. Once that consumers. happened, and the full resources of the u lity were behind the effort, things started to move very quickly. This support from IDA and GPOBA, along with the work of ESMAP and by the World Bank’s urban experts, was coordi- By December 2014, 15,000 households had been connected under the slum electrifica on program. Six months later, in May 2015, Kenya Power was at 150,000 households, and demand was s ll growing. The challenge going forward will not be so much in building trust or genera ng demand, but in keeping momentum going. The GPOBA and IDA funding will carry through only un l June 2016. Meanwhile, ESMAP has con nued a more direct form of South-South knowledge exchange, sponsoring Kenya Power experts to go to Brazil, Jamaica, and India to learn from u li es there. The focus is now on sustainability, on ensuring households remain paying customers, and do not revert to using illegal power. In this respect, Kenya Power has expressed strong interest in the experience of Indian ci es such as New Delhi and Mumbai, where u li es have managed to increase revenues even in poor communi es. At the same me, Kenya Power’s unprecedented success leaves open the ques on of whether other countries will one day learn from Kenya. Harun The Energy Sector Management Mwangi certainly thinks so. Assistance Program (ESMAP) is “It’s my hope that others will benefit from our experience, without our ini al a global knowledge and technical problems,” he says. “You go direct to customer engagement and prepare the assistance program administered ground so they understand why you are doing what you are doing. And again, by the World Bank. It provides management at the top must be commi ed to bringing power to the poor.” analytical and advisory services to low- and middle-income countries to increase their know-how and institutional capacity to achieve environmentally sustainable ener- gy solutions for poverty reduction and economic growth. ESMAP is funded by Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, as well as the World Bank. IMPACT Issue 09 September 2015