Hindpal Jabbal.
Glancing up from his sofa, Hindpal Jabbal managed a weak smile, then sipped the last of his masala tea. There was weariness in his eyes and his voice was a bit raspy.
For a senior citizen in his 80s, his train of thought was rather impressive, never once veering off track in our hour-long chat. But hardly surprising. The retired electrical engineer with a master’s degree from the University of Manchester had cracked the code for keeping his brain sharp and alert.
He was a consummate reader, played board games, took strolls, shot darts, and solved puzzles. And not long ago he would drive himself around Nairobi streets for meetings, in between medical checkups. However, age eventually confined him to an electric wheelchair.
I had dropped him my book at his Nairobi home. Turns out it was the last time I would see him alive as he died shortly after the clock calendar turned to 2025. He was just days away from 88 years.
For years, notable journalists, including myself, came to sharpen their reporting acumen against his whetstone. Senior executives in energy parastatals benefited from his stewardship too.
With journalists, he was especially fussy about numbers. Whenever I did a story in the newspaper, he would be first to either offer a kind word or reprimand.
Cost of electricity
With policymakers, he was evangelical about the cost of electricity as a product of planning and efficiency in the running of power stations. As a rule, electricity generation should follow the economic merit order of dispatch in which the cheapest power source available is injected into the national grid first, followed by the next cheapest, and so on.
Only after the cheapest sources have been exhausted should more expensive options be considered, for example, to cover demand during the evening peak as families switch on lights, electronics, hot showers and other home appliances. Time and again, Mr Jabbal felt this golden rule was being overlooked to serve vested interests.
The father of three bought his first car, a Volkswagen, at Sh4,000 in 1960, three years before Kenya got independence from colonial rule. Back then, a litre of petrol cost one shilling, meaning he would spend about Sh100 in fuel for a round trip between Kisumu and Nairobi. From an early age, Mr Jabbal, whose father was a trade unionist, somehow had a picture of his future career path. A palm reader studied the folds and creases of his palms. He was told he would have a long, well-defined career path.
The story of the evolution of Kenya’s electricity market won’t be complete without mentioning Jabbal. He spent 26 years of his working life at Kenya Power from the colonial days, rising from junior to chief engineer.
Electricity imports
He saw it all. Throughout the 1970s, Kenya was almost completely reliant on electricity imports from Uganda that was then under the iron rule of dictator Idi Amin. At some point, Amin resorted to economic sabotage after an altercation with Jomo Kenyatta’s government, switching off power supply to Kenya.
“We were thrown into darkness. The guy weaponised power supply to have his way where military firepower failed,” Jabbal shook from a belly laugh as he retold the story, noting that it forced officials to explore alternatives. Though Kenya was also producing hydropower, it wasn’t enough to meet the needs of the economy at the time.
Today, while electricity imports are still serving western Kenya, the exposure has been reduced. Kenya now has a diversified energy mix, having developed a fleet of wind, thermal, hydropower, solar and geothermal power stations. And another import corridor with Ethiopia has been opened as a contingency measure.
The energy landscape radically shifted before the old man’s eyes. You could say beneath his feet too. During his time, managerial positions at Kenya Power were a preserve of Whites, with backup roles going to Kenyan engineers.
Mr Jabbal was not one to ride off into the sunset after retirement. He would go on to be part of the World Bank team that steered radical reforms, including the unbundling of the country’s electricity sector, which diluted Kenya Power’s influence.
Until 1998, Kenya Power covered the entire value chain of generation, transmission and distribution. It lost the mandate to generate power in 1998 when Kenya Electricity Generating Company was formed.
