Public Private Partnerships of Kenya
The government has adopted a strong public-private policy to address the estimated infrastructural funding gap of US$2-3 billion required annually over the next ten years. The Public Private Partnership Act No.15 became active in February 2013. Prior to that, a number of PPP projects had successfully gone ahead in the country without a dedicated legal and regulatory policy framework, including the 90 MW Rabai Independent Power Project (2006); Mobile Telephone licensing of Safaricom and Celtel (1999) and Econet (2004); the concession of Kenya Railways Corporations freight and passenger services (2006); and the Nairobi Urban Toll Road Project, approved 2009. Since the late 1990s, Kenya’s key sectors for private investment have emerged as telecommunications, energy, transport, water and sewage.
Energy currently accounts for the highest total infrastructure investment followed by ports, roads, water and sanitation, railways and airports. Development via private partnerships is a fundamental tool of Kenya’s super-structural plan ‘Vision 2030’ (2008-30), to convert the country into a newly industrialised middle-income nation with a high quality of life for all citizens by 2030.