Most parts of the country were plunged into darkness on Wednesday night, July 29 in a widespread power outage, with the first reports emerging at around 8:30pm.
Vantage Ke established that large sections of Nairobi's Central Business District (CBD) were without electricity, with only a handful of buildings remaining lit through backup generators.
Commuters at the Nairobi Railway Station and the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Station also reported power outages, with videos obtained by Vantage Ke confirming the blackout.
Residents along Thika Road, including the Kahawa Sukari area, also reported losing power. Our editor-in-chief also reported power outages in the areas of Huruma and Mathare North in Ruaraka Constituency.
Similar outages were reported in parts of Nakuru and Shanzu in Mombasa, pointing to a disruption affecting multiple regions across the country.
Some areas, however, remained unaffected, with electricity supply continuing in most parts of Lang'ata and Kayole in Nairobi.
Businesses across Nairobi's Central Business District shut their doors earlier than usual, especially along Kenyatta Avenue, Moi Avenue and Tom Mboya Street, as the widespread blackout left the city centre in darkness.
A spot check by Vantage Ke found major roads within the CBD gridlocked after traffic lights went off, forcing county enforcement officers and police to manually direct motorists in a bid to ease the congestion.
At 9:05pm, Kenya Power confirmed the outage in a customer alert obtained by Vantage Ke, saying it had experienced a "widespread power outage affecting customers in Nairobi, Coast, Mt. Kenya and parts of Central Rift." The utility added that "parts of North Rift and Western regions are on supply."
Kenya Power said its technical teams had been deployed to restore electricity to the affected regions "as quickly as possible" and apologised to customers for the disruption as restoration efforts continued.
The latest outage comes slightly more than three months after a nationwide blackout on April 2, when a fault on the national electricity transmission network interrupted power supply in several parts of the country before electricity was gradually restored.
Just a day earlier, on Tuesday, Kenya Power had notified customers of scheduled electricity maintenance in parts of Kisumu, Nyeri, Embu and Kirinyaga counties, with planned interruptions set to run from 9am to 5pm.
