EMP-GLOBAL IMPACT #4

We speak to Felix Akello, who is an Energy and Environment Specialist working with the County Government of Kisumu  – one of 47 sub-national governments in Kenya. Kisumu County hosts the City of Kisumu which is the third largest city in the country. It has a population of 1.28 million residents according to the 2019 census. At Trieste, Felix followed the Energy Access Explorer track.  

Why are you here and do you have the support of your employer?  

Yes, my employer is aware because back home I’m the energy planning officer and I manage resource mobilization, monitoring and evaluation. Being here is designed to support me with those responsibilities.  On top of that, our aim is that I will use this training to advance energy planning for the county, and I’ll also be supporting other counties within Kenya with this expertise.

I also sit on the national platform, Energy Investment  Marketplace, where I represent counties with the network government, CSOs, and all stakeholders. We normally have meetings every quarter to stay connected so I will share my knowledge with them.

Have any other members of your team had this training or are you the first?

I’m actually the first. My SEforALL contact told me about it because it is exactly the solution I was looking for in my work.  It is going to help me solve the problems of having information but not being able to present it correctly or in some cases not knowing what information we need.

I’m hoping that with my training we can create a platform where people can match and connect with resources, technology, community, and politics. All sectors will find this helpful so long as the information is authenticated and correct. Ensuring that we have the correct data will avoid statements or decisions being made with figures that can’t be verified or matched.

For me, the Energy Access Explorer interaction  means I can get information quickly on a dashboard and relay it to the people who need it. 

Generally, do you have access to good data in your situation, or do you have to try and find it?

In our case, we have data because of sitting on the county M&E team as a Focal Point whereby we get data from departments on energy, transport, and public works.  It’s a lot of data and I’m here because I need to learn how to work with it all (it’s in different places), synergise it and present it so that it makes sense.

How useful has this event been for you?

For me it’s very useful because we’re at a point where we just launched our roadmap towards 100% renewable energy transition in Kisumu. We did that on 8 August, two or three days before I flew in here. So, this is very timely because now we’re taking the content of our roadmap and actually bringing it to life. Energy Access Explorer will help me understand the challenges we have in terms of demand and supply and how to match all that with available resources. So, I think it’s a very good thing.

Do you think you’ll be able to send other colleagues to this training in future?

Yes, I think I’d want to have my colleagues learn this because they are also thinking about these challenges and their possible solutions. I think it would be very useful for them to go through the same process as I have, with the support of the trainers here, so that they can find the correct solution to their particular challenges.  Everybody has information – governments, private institutions, everybody but they don’t know what they have, or how to get the best from it and they’re in silos at the moment. But if you all put all this together, then you can have policies that are very inclusively planned.

How did you choose this track, was it recommended for you?

I reached out to one of the CCG colleagues and managed to ask their advice.  I was just in time to apply for this EMP and fortunately I was accepted.  I’ve been funded by CCG and supported by my government.

Is each county doing its own plan or are there some that are not for some reason?

The Integrated National Energy Plan, the INEP, is a structure for all 47 counties of which Kisumu is one, to create their own plan. Every county is supposed to develop a county energy plan that gets reviewed annually.  So, it’s a continuous process, and the data is updated regularly.

I talked to my stakeholders before I came here and some of them sent me real data which I’m using for my analysis including GIZ.   We’re mapping information from all stakeholders, not just government, so we are trying to see how we can put that together. It’s important to us that we have all those different stakeholder perspectives and needs factored in.

What is the vision for your country, what kind of position do you want to get to in terms of clean energy?

I also developed the national energy policy recommendations for Kenya for a transition towards 100% renewable energy, which I think I finished around May this year. It was work done through ICLE Africa.  ICLE Africa sponsored Kisumu County for the transition towards 100% renewable energy.

Nationally, there is a plan to reach net zero by 2050 so we’re trying to do a lot of acceleration programmes to see how to get off non-renewable energy, and we’re looking at how to increase our electrification rate and promote DRE solutions countywide.

Do you have a sense of which energy sources you will use?

We have many resources that are untapped even now. The issue of wind is a key thing for me. I would like to see it on a much larger scale but at the moment most of the work is on small scale wind turbines, where we can have standalone units, locally.  There’s also tidal energy which is really untapped. All of my learning here can help create a model for that.

The energy that we mainly use is geothermal. If we mix geothermal and hydro – all the renewable energy – it comes to around 92%. The other 8% is the non-renewable, which we are phasing out. But as we phase out, we’re looking at the renewable energy solutions that we have to see how we can make them affordable. We must have a solution and increase uptake although there is really very little money to support transition right now.

I guess people and businesses need incentives to change. Do you think that coming here has helped and you go back and use the skills that you’ve developed now?

I’ll be presenting all this work for investors to look at, as well as local players, politicians and budgeting teams. It’s going to really help, and I want us to be able to come back again to report on how far we have moved on this.

Yes, brilliant. And it sounds like your employer, Kisumu County, is quite a dynamic, is it a forward-thinking county?

Yes, I’ve been with the county for the last two governments. We started with the counties being a new thing in Kenya, so we spent five years creating structures. Then we had the next governor who is still the governor now, His Excellency Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o. Now we are having a lot of policy discussions, roadmaps and plans, and a positive change including a circular economy plan. We should look at our city as one of the greenest in Africa.

Excellent. What do you do with your waste, because waste is a big problem, isn’t it?

We recently talked with some developers, so they’re doing recycling of bottles and plastic. We are also having discussions about how to convert organic waste to active power.

That’s fascinating. Thank you so much for talking to me.