Kenya trails other African economies in introducing energy-saving measures, including use of public transport, work-from-home practices and limits on travel to shield consumers from soaring energy costs.
A tracker from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that Egypt leads on the continent with measures such as asking the public to limit fuel usage, cutting travel by State officials, and working from home for government employees.
Ethiopia, Mauritius, Mozambique and Senegal have also asked their citizens to avoid unnecessary travel and other fuel-consuming activities.
Tanzania has ordered government officials to travel collectively in buses, while Madagascar declared a state of emergency for 15 days.
Other countries have shut schools or reduced days spent in classrooms and launched campaigns asking the public to be “frugal” in use of fuel.
The measures help in conserving fuel stocks amid supply disruptions as well as reduce energy bills.
Kenya is missing from the IEA tracker on government actions to conserve energy, with the country turning on tax cuts and subsidies to ease the surge in fuel prices.
Rising fuel prices have triggered deadly protests in Kenya and forced countries across Africa to take emergency measures, as a deepening energy crisis drives severe disruption across the continent.
Diesel and petrol prices at the pump have surged in recent weeks, as the economic shock of the war in the Middle East starts to reach consumers across sub-Saharan Africa.
Spiraling fuel prices have turned out to be the biggest headache for the Kenya government, despite concerns that failure to conserve fuel could haunt the economy in the coming months if disruptions of the Middle East war persist.
‘This is increasingly a ‘higher for longer’ environment, which we expect to last for the next few months,’ Mark Russell, CEO of Puma Energy, was quoted by Financial Times.
Puma Energy operates more than 700 fuel stations in Africa and 2,200 globally and many other oil firms are smarting from the supply disruptions.
Countries such as Malawi have depleted their strategic supplies of diesel and petrol, while Mozambique is grappling with a severe supply crisis, mainly in the capital, Maputo.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, where nearly a quarter of the world’s fuel passes, and attacks on major refineries in the Gulf region have led to the supply crisis.
Kenya was nearly plunged into a shortage of petrol last month when one of the vessels carrying 85,000 metric tons of the fuel was unable to leave the port of Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates.
But the country shipped in an emergency cargo outside the government-to-government (G-to-G) framework with three Gulf oil majors, helping avert the crisis.
But the G-to-G suppliers have already warned that they have been forced to source fuel from alternative places outside the Gulf region, signaling that Kenya could face a supply crisis if the Middle East war does not stop in the coming months.