African Development Bank (AfDB) has provided $152m additional funding for ast Mile Connectivity Project in Kenya which will connect 300,000 consumers to electricity grid.

Kenya’s sole electricity distributor, Kenya Power CEO Ben Chumo said that the African Development Bank (AfDB) launched additional funding for the Last Mile Connectivity project, an electricity upgrade project aimed at providing grid access to more households.

Chumo said that the additional financing will enable the connection of 310,851 more customers under the second phase of the project with first phase involving connections to 314, 200 customers.

Separately, AfDB is also funding the Kenya-Tanzania interconnector project for Kenya Electricity Transmission (KETRACO).

The project aims to enhance supply, reliability and affordability of electricity through cross-border exchanges of cheap and cleaner surplus power from neighboring countries.

In addition to developing 5,000km of power lines, Kenya aims to have 6,700MW of install power capacity by 2017.

Xinhua News agency cited KETRACO acting CEO Fenardes Barasa said the Kenya-Tanzania interconnector is the initial phase f the Zambia-Tanzania-Kenya interconnector project.

The Zambia-Tanzania-Kenya interconnector project, aims to enable power trade in the Eastern and Southern African Power pools.

Barasa said: "KETRACO will implement part of the project by constructing the 93km line from Isinya substation to Arusha substation.

"This part of the project will be financed by Kenya and African Development Bank at a cost of 7.16 million dollars and 50 million dollars respectively."

Tanzania intends to increase its power generation capacity to 3,000MW by 2016.