Regional Renewable Energy Course for Civil Engineers

The rush by the country’s energy experts to explore new areas of energy sources to mitigate against the high cost and unreliable conventional energy sources is receiving momentum. At least Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology has already embarked on two separate and promising research and training initiatives to tap into the country’s abundant but unexploited renewable energy with the potential to supply cheap and reliable energy particularly to Kenya’s 90 percent of the rural populations who live in darkness with no access to modern energy.

In the first project which  is planned to commence sometime this month and run for four years, JKUAT  has teamed up with two international organizations – Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA) and the  United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to scale up rural electrification  through the exploitation of a number of renewable energy sources including wind, solar, biomass, mini waterfalls that will provide energy to majority rural people, and thus drive them to productive economic activities with the potential to narrow down  poverty levels. JICA will provide funding for the project that will be used to acquire modern equipment for the program’s research while JKUAT will be tasked to undertake research as well as train appropriate personnel to service the renewable energy industry. Read more…