Cabinet Secretary for Ministry of EAC, Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Peninah Malonza has disclosed that President William Ruto will be launching construction of Kenya’s largest fresh water dam next month in Mwingi, Kitui County.

Speaking while leading a relief food distribution drive in Kitui West Constituency, CS Malonza noted that the said dam will sit on a 165 square kilometers piece of land cutting across Kitui, Tharaka-Nithi and Tana River counties, and will cost the government a total of KSh425 billion. 

Construction of the High Grand Falls Dam, which will hold over 5.6 billion cubic metres of water, is part of government’s plan to enhance water access and supply to local communities.

Hydro-electricity generation

The dam, which will be constructed along River Tana, will also be used to generate hydro electricity. The government projects that upon completion, the dam will generate between between 500MW-700MW of electricity to the national grid.

The dam will also help in the controlling of flooding in the Tana Delta, which usually displace thousands of families annually.

The governments of Kenya and the United Kingdom in November 2022 signed an agreement for the development of the proposed dam.

Funding

President Ruto and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed the agreement on behalf of their respective governments, in a ceremony that took place on the sidelines of the climate conference COP27 in Egypt.

It is a public-private partnership project. “The British contractor — GBM Consortium Limited — will fund, design, build, own and operate the project for several years to recover their costs, meaning the Kenyan government isn’t paying a penny in the PPP arrangement,” Irrigation PS Ephantus Kimotho said in a previous interview.

CS Malonza also said that the government has commissioned KSh250 million to kick off construction of Umaa dam in Kitui Central constituency and the contractor is already on the ground doing bush clearing. The project will cost a total of KSh1.6 billion.