Posted on :Monday , 16th October 2023

The High Grand Falls Dam Construction Project, which will cost billions and began approximately ten years ago, has foreseen an important turning point as the Kenyan Government just signed the first agreement with the British Construction Company that was given the contract. The National Irrigation Authority and GBM engineering firm concluded a contract, and as a consequence, the project contractor has been granted permission to build an irrigation camp in the counties of Tharaka and Kitui, where the construction project is located. The assigned contractor has been given six months to finish the ground mapping and to update all the technical and social data in order to determine the total number of households that will be impacted by the High Grand Falls Dam project work as it is actually carried out.  

In order to recover the expenditures, the contractor GBM will be fully responsible for the High Grand Falls project's total design, financing, building, and operation for years. This is simply meant to demonstrate that the Kenyan Government is unlikely to contribute financially to the PPP. An estimated Ksh425 billion will be spent on the High Grand Falls Dam project. The dam will surpass Aswan Dam on the Nile as the second-largest freshwater dam in Africa. Due to its larger cost than the Standard Gauge Railway building project, the dam will be the Kenyan government's greatest single project. The dam will be capable to supply about 5600 million cubic metres of water, which will be utilised to construct the irrigation system for 400,000 hectares of land. Moreover, It will be capable of producing up to 1,000MW of electricity.