NAIROBI, KENYA – Hellena Wanjiku, 29, lives in Wanyee, an area west of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, with her sister and brother-in-law. She works as a hairdresser and manages one of the couple’s salons. But she says that recent power cuts have hurt business.
“Electricity is central to the thriving of my business – heating water, powering the radio, which is for entertaining my clients, hair drying and styling,” Wanjiku says with a loud sigh.
She says her most recent electricity bill was outrageous.
“My electricity bill this month was crazy,” she says helplessly. “It’ll eat up all my profits! I was in shock when I read the bill.”
She says she’s not sure why it was so high, but that she has heard that the cost of electricity has been increasing.
“I’m perplexed that my bill is so high this time,” she says. “I heard over the radio that the cost of it will increase. This could be the reason.”
She says the bill is so high that she wonders whether the power company made a mistake.
“Maybe they made some mistake because my appliances are so few,” she says. “And I do not use the premise through the night because I live at my sister’s house or on Sundays, when I take rest from work.”
She says the high electricity bill has made it hard to afford other items she needs to run the salon.
“The thought of restocking scares me,” she says, her eyes filled with despair. “Prices of hair, skin and related beauty products are so high. My customers are now paying more for beauty treatments and hairdo in order for the business to be cushioned against the rapid inflation.”
Most of Wanjiku’s clients come from the surrounding slums, such as Wanyee and Kawangware, for hair-braiding or blow-drying.
”I’m afraid that I will lose all my clients at this rate,” she says. “Will the low-income earners have their hair done at the expense of a meal? I’m afraid not!”
Born in Rift Valley province, Wanjiku moved in with her sister in 2002 after their parents died. She says she depends on her sister for food and shelter. She hopes to one day earn enough money at the salon to become financially independent, but power cuts and soaring costs make that dream seem possible. Now, she says she has to peg her hopes on marrying a man who can take care of her.
Women small-business owners and operators are increasingly affected by recent power cuts, as they say that their operations depend on electricity and that alternatives are expensive or inefficient. Linking the cuts to the current drought, government officials say weather conditions will only continue to deteriorate. Spokesmen for Kenya Power Company, the company responsible for electricity here, say the company is doing the best it can with insufficient power supplies and that the situation should improve by November.
Earlier in the year, several power outages raised suspicions of power rationing in Nairobi and other parts of the country. Joseph Njoroge, managing director of Kenya Power, officially announced power cuts at the end of July, citing breakdowns of generators among other causes, and released a rationing schedule. Last month, Kenya officially joined Tanzania and Uganda on the growing list of East African countries that are rationing power to domestic and industrial consumers as the region suffers from the worst drought in 60 years.
Women who own or operate small businesses in Kenya say their livelihoods depend on electricity and that they lack the cushion against reduced business hours, rising electricity bills, and costly or inefficient power alternatives to stay viable if the situation persists. After putting in years of hard work to build their businesses and become financially independent, they say power cuts are threatening everything they’ve worked for.
Alice Wahome, 40, owns a salon and a butcher shop in Kenyatta Market, an area in Nairobi popular for buying food and for women to get their hair done. She is a resident of Ngumo, a neighborhood in Nairobi, and has been in business for the last decade.
She says the frequent power cuts threaten business at her salon, which relies heavily on electricity for lighting the salon, heating water and drying hair. She says that she has had to fall back on strategies developed during past power cuts.
“In the past, we have had to collect money as a group of traders and buy diesel-powered generators when power is rationed out,” Wahome says. “This allows us to meet the needs of our clients.”
But she admits that it and other alternatives are costly.
“There is also the option of renting the same services from well-to-do traders,” she says. “This is, however, quite expensive because the cost of fuel has escalated, currently going for 120 shillings KES [$1.20 USD] per liter, up from 80 shillings KES [80 cents USD] late last year.”
Jane Njeri, 36, a mother of two, is from the Kikuyu tribe in the Central province but now lives in Nairobi. She runs a small business, which she says has also been affected by power cuts.
Njeri sells cooked meals to construction workers at the Dagoretti Corner area of Nairobi. She says she has worked hard to build her clientele, which also includes shop owners in the shopping center, such as salon owners, vegetable vendors and car mechanics.
“I have had to make friends with most of these traders,” she says. “That’s how I’m able to sell my food. So I often pop in their stores to chat, drop their meals, or pick up their used cutlery and eating containers.”
Njeri says she has enjoyed cooking them porridge during the winter, which ran from June through August. She says they only get a brief lunch break so they eat breakfast and lunch together.
”I also make them lunch,” she says. “They love chapati or ugali accompanied with beef or vegetable stews.”
Chapati is a Kiswahili word for bread made from firm wheat dough with a little salt that is flattened into a disc and fried. Ugali is a staple Kenyan meal, made from boiling maize flour and water to create a doughlike consistency.
She says business has been going well so far.
“I made chapati out of a whole 2-kilogram bag of flour yesterday,” she says. “I was not sure whether my customers would finish them. But I am so happy that the chapati ran out, and the construction workers kept asking for more.”
Still, she says that building her business hasn’t been easy.
“In the recent past, I have had to work single-handedly all days of the week except Sundays, when I worship and rest,” she says. “I cannot afford to pay for an extra worker. Two of my younger sisters are on school holiday and have been of great help.”
And because her operations rely on electricity, recent power cuts have presented an added challenge. She currently cooks with huge pots and pans in her two-bedroom, wooden house.
“I use multiple ovens,” she says. “Some depend on electricity.”
She says that power cuts have increased the cost of cooking with electricity.
“Electricity is becoming too expensive to cook with, so I shall soon resort to using charcoal,” she says. “This will slow down my cooking because using a jiko [charcoal furnace] is quite messy and takes too long to light up.”
She says it’s her only option, though.
“Using a jiko will enable me make profit until Kenya Power keeps their promise that the cost of electricity will go down,” she says. “But I don’t trust them.”
Her income supplements her husband’s in these harsh economic times that have hit the country. He is a truck driver. She says she hope her business can continue to grow so she can support her family, but she knows the economy is tough.
“I have a dream that my business will grow,” she says. “I hope to start up a big hotel for rich people someday but will have a place for the poor, too. I will provide cheap food for them. But for now, I will keep hoping that the economy will improve and be conducive for small traders like myself.”
Another small-business owner, Salome Nandwa, 35, has a cybercafe in the Dagoretti Corner area. She says the power cuts have threatened her business as well.
“My business is so dependent on electricity – period!” she says.
Her small cybercafe has five desktop computers and three laptops, among other standard office items. Most of her clients can’t afford computers of their own so they come to her cafe. She says students, professionals and business owners constitute her main customers, and she has been able to earn a reliable income during the last three years.
“Most of my clients are students and often require Internet, typing and computer literacy services,” she says. “Youngsters also come for music and movie copying, too.”
But she says that recent power cuts may force her to close her business and lay off her four employees.
“Risks of the business have been minimal,” she says. “But this year, power costs are increasing every month. I may have to close shop soon, or downsize, to make ends meet.”
Reduced water levels have contributed to daily power rationing. Kenya is currently facing “depressed rainfall,” according to the Kenya Meteorological Department, the governmental department in charge of Kenya’s weather forecasts and climatologic data.
“Conditions are expected to deteriorate during this season,” Joseph Mukabana of the department says.
An environmental expert in the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, who declined to be named, says that the ministry receives weekly weather forecasts from the department and updates on the weather conditions facing the country and the greater Horn of Africa region.
“The Meteorological Department keeps us updated weekly,” he says. “The current drought is not about to end.”
He says rainfall, which is necessary for hydroelectric dams, has been unreliable.
“The unreliable rainfall in Kenya is emanating from the unpredictable weather conditions coming from the equatorial forest over Zaire and DRC – Democratic Republic Congo – basin,” he says.
He says climate change has worsened conditions.
“A further cause is the global climatic changes that we are under,” the expert says.
He says that the weather will continue to affect power here and that responsibility for managing available supplies lies with Kenya Power.
“The weather conditions are expected to continue to affect the capacity of hydroelectric power and, overall, the energy sector,” he says. “It is up to the relevant body, Kenya Power, to act within its mandate and ensure that normal supply of power resumes.”
Migwi Theuri, Kenya Power spokesman, says the company’s August press statement includes all up-to-date information. According to the statement, Kenya Power had no option but to resort to the power cuts because current power generation reserves are insufficient to meet the rising national power demand. It attributed the insufficiency to delayed installation of new power generators because of prolonged processing of payments’ security guarantees, breakdown and outage on maintenance of some generating machines and unavailability of power contracted from a co-generation plant.
The power company releases daily advertisements apologizing for the cuts and providing updates about when and where the power will be cut. It posts similar information on its website as well. Power company officials say this is the best they can do under the current crisis.
According to the company, power supplies should improve by November, when it will install an emergency 60 MW power plant in Muhoroni, a town in western Kenya.
Until then, small-business owners continue their struggle to fend off closures.
