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Kenya’s risk runs between its rains and its grid

Part I describes systems and their couplings. It assesses no authority and ranks no county.

7 min read2 figures1 table17 notesNR-COUNTRY-KEN-2026-BASELINE

Contents
  1. ·Edition home
  2. ·Executive summary
  3. 1Kenya’s risk runs between its rains and its grid
    1. 1.1 The questions this part answers
    2. 1.2 The argument
    3. 1.3 Twenty couplings between five systems
  4. 2Key findings
  5. 3Systems and sectors at baseline
  6. 4Risks and capability
  7. 5Failed rains, grid shortfall and outbreak in the arid counties
  8. 6Readings from the other desks
  9. 7The 2027 agenda
  10. 8Systems in depth
  11. AMethodology
  12. BData appendix
  13. CReferences and record
  14. ·Complete edition, for print

1.1The questions this part answers

Key questions

  • Where is Kenya’s risk concentrated, and in which systems?
  • Which couplings carry shocks from one system to the next?
  • Which capabilities hold under compound stress, and which are only documented?
  • What must the 2027 programme measure first?

In this part

  • Narrative
  • Headline finding
  • Lead figure
  • Five system chapters
  • Twelve-domain reading
  • Sector screens
  • Dependency matrix
  • Risk objects
  • Capability ladder
  • Scenario
  • Three lenses
  • Portfolio

1.2The argument

Kenya is a lower-middle-income economy of 57.5 million people, 32.2% of them in towns, and 45.8% of its workers are employed in agriculture1619. This baseline reads its exposure as three forces acting together: rainfall that swings between flood and drought, an electricity system that depends on geothermal and hydropower plus imports, and a large rural and arid population with thin buffers.

The grid has grown. Generation rose 8.44% to 15,692.81 GWh in the year to June 2026, up from 12,652.74 GWh in FY2021/22, and geothermal supplied 40.91%2526. Imports supplied 12.19%, most of them from Ethiopia, and system losses were 21.38% against an allowable 16.5%25. The second climate contribution sets a 2035 target of 35% below a business-as-usual level of 215 Mt CO₂e29.

Water and sanitation are the thinner services. In 2024, 65.6% of people had at least basic drinking water and 40.9% had basic sanitation, and renewable internal freshwater was 381.5 m³ per person in 202291011. Two measures of water stress disagree in level because they use different bases: withdrawals were 19.5% of internal resources in 2022 and 11% of renewable resources after environmental flows in 20231237.

The climate layer adds loss of life. The 2024 long-rains floods caused 478 reported deaths and displaced 119,820 households across 46 of 47 counties, many of them the counties hit by the 2021–2023 drought35. Kenya’s transparency report states that droughts have doubled in frequency since 2005 and that 70% of natural disasters are climate-related27.

Food supply is mixed. Maize output rose to 45.8 million bags in 2025, yet about 3.7 million people in the arid counties faced IPC Phase 3 or worse in April to June 2026, and three counties held about 65% of those in Phase 4323334. Maize retail prices were 15% higher than a year earlier in February 202632.

This edition therefore reads Kenya’s risk as a property of the couplings between rain, food, health and the grid. The matrix, risk objects, capability ladder and scenario that follow ask the same two questions: where does a shock travel next, and who holds the capability to stop it?

Figure 1.1Where does Kenya’s electricity come from? Generation by source, FY2025/26 (GWh)

Geothermal supplied 6,420.51 GWh of 15,692.81 GWh. Hydro, wind and solar together supplied about 5,957 GWh (ESTIMATED arithmetic). Imports of 1,913.66 GWh were 12.19% of supply, and Ethiopia supplied 1,577.66 GWh of them25.

ItemBar, scaled to the largest valueValue
Geothermal6420.51
Hydro3554.31
Wind1931.72
Imports1913.66
Thermal1309.42
Solar, utility scale471.4

Source: as cited in the note to this figure. Year 2026.

Figure ID FIG-COUNTRY-KEN-2026-BASELINE-01-003

6,420.51GWh

geothermal generation25

3,554.31GWh

hydro generation25

12.19%

imports in the supply mix25

392.36GWh

geothermal energy curtailed25

1.3Twenty couplings between five systems

The Kenya matrix types the twenty couplings between the five core systems. Strengths are Nexus estimates from the cited evidence and analogue events; they set the starting graph that the Q1 2027 Foundry cut will test.

Figure 1.2Couplings between the five systems

Each line is one coupling from one system to another, drawn by the strength the edition assigns. Strengths are Nexus estimates from the cited evidence and analogue events.

  • Strong
  • Moderate
  • Weak

Source: this edition’s coupling matrix (Table 1.1); status Estimated.

Table 1.1Coupling matrix: from the row system to the column system
From, toWATENEFOOHLTBIO
WAT Water·STRONG
hydropower · cooling of thermal plants		STRONG
rain-fed crops · pasture · irrigation		STRONG
drinking water · cholera		MODERATE
rift lakes · wetlands · river flows
ENE EnergyMODERATE
pumping · treatment		·MODERATE
fertiliser import · cold chain · irrigation		MODERATE
facility power · cold chain		MODERATE
charcoal and fuelwood demand
FOO FoodMODERATE
withdrawals · nutrients		WEAK
bagasse · biomass supply		·STRONG
nutrition · undernourishment		STRONG
land conversion · grazing
HLT HealthWEAK
workforce		WEAK
workforce		MODERATE
labour · disease		·WEAK
residues
BIO BiodiversitySTRONG
catchments · regulation · filtration		MODERATE
catchments for hydropower · biomass		MODERATE
pollination · rangeland		MODERATE
zoonoses · smoke		·
Strength: strong, moderate or weak; a Nexus estimate (status Estimated) from cited evidence and analogue events. The scale is defined in Annex A.

Transmission paths

  1. 01

    CLI → FOO → HLT

    A failed rainy season raises food prices and acute food insecurity, and health services take the load.

    Reported arid counties 20263233

  2. 02

    CLI → WAT → INF

    Heavy rain destroys water sources, roads and health facilities.

    Reported 2024 long-rains floods35

  3. 03

    WAT → ENE

    Low rainfall cuts hydro output and raises reliance on thermal and imports.

    Inferred hydro 22.65% of FY2025/2625

  4. 04

    ENE → WAT → HLT

    Power loss interrupts pumping and treatment, and exposure to waterborne disease rises.

    Inferred losses and outages25 · cholera33

  5. 05

    CLI → FIN

    Repeated disasters raise fiscal pressure in a country at high risk of debt distress.

    Inferred debt and floods2435

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

  1. 1World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators, “Population, total” (SP.POP.TOTL), Kenya, observation year 2025. World Bank, Washington DC, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  2. 6World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators, “Urban population (% of total population)” (SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS), Kenya, observation year 2025. World Bank, Washington DC, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  3. 19World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators, “Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) (modelled ILO estimate)” (SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS), Kenya, observation year 2025. World Bank, Washington DC, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  4. 25Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (ed.), Energy and Petroleum Statistics Report for the year ended 30th June 2026. EPRA, Nairobi, September 2026, observation year FY2025/26, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  5. 26Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (ed.), Energy and Petroleum Statistics Report for the Financial Year ended 30th June 2022. EPRA, Nairobi, 2022, observation year FY2021/22, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  6. 29Climate Action Tracker (ed.), “Kenya: targets, 2035 NDC.” Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute, update of 31 March 2026, observation year 2035, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  7. 9World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators, “People using at least basic drinking water services (% of population)” (SH.H2O.BASW.ZS), Kenya, observation year 2024. World Bank, Washington DC, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  8. 10World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators, “People using at least basic sanitation services (% of population)” (SH.STA.BASS.ZS), Kenya, observation year 2024. World Bank, Washington DC, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  9. 11World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators, “Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)” (ER.H2O.INTR.PC), Kenya, observation year 2022. World Bank, Washington DC, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  10. 12World Bank (ed.), World Development Indicators, “Annual freshwater withdrawals, total (% of internal resources)” (ER.H2O.FWTL.ZS), Kenya, observation year 2022. World Bank, Washington DC, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  11. 37UN-Water (ed.), SDG 6 Data Portal, Kenya country snapshot (6.2.1a safely managed sanitation 2024; 6.4.2 water stress 2023; 6.5.1 IWRM implementation 2023). UN-Water, Geneva, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  12. 35International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (ed.), Kenya: 2024 IFRC network annual report, January to December, in support of the Kenya Red Cross Society. IFRC, Geneva, 8 August 2025, observation year 2024, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  13. 27UNFCCC (ed.), Report on the technical expert review of the first biennial transparency report of Kenya, FCCC/ETF/TERR.1/2024/KEN. UNFCCC, Bonn, 13 February 2026, observation year 2022, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  14. 32Food and Agriculture Organization (ed.), GIEWS Country Brief: Kenya, reference date 4 May 2026. FAO, Rome, 2026, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  15. 33World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa (ed.), Weekly Situation Report, Kenya, Week 22: 31 May to 7 June 2026. WHO AFRO, Brazzaville, 2026, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  16. 34Central Bank of Kenya (ed.), Agriculture Survey, May 2026, quoting the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Economic Survey 2026. CBK, Nairobi, May 2026, observation year 2025, accessed 2026-11-03.back
  17. 24World Bank (ed.), Kenya: Overview, country page (poverty 43.3% at $3.00 a day in 2025, public debt 70.6% of GDP, high risk of debt distress). World Bank, Washington DC, observation year 2025, accessed 2026-11-03.back

Cite this chapter

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Chapter 1: Kenya’s risk runs between its rains and its grid. In Kenya Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: The State of Kenya’s Interdependent Systems (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-COUNTRY-KEN-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report

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