Kenya to launch Africa's biggest wind farm

Kenya will on Friday inaugurate Africa's biggest wind power plant, a mammoth project in a gusty stretch of remote wilderness that now provides nearly a fifth of its energy needs.

The USD 680-million (600 million euro) project, a sprawling 365-turbine wind farm on the eastern shores of Lake Turkana, will deliver 310 megawatts of renewable power to the national grid of East Africa's most dynamic economy.

The largest private investment in Kenya's history, the Lake Turkana Wind Power project was beset with delays and took nearly a decade to rise from the arid landscape 600 kilometres (372 miles) north of Nairobi.

The Turkana project, lying in a natural corridor dubbed "the windiest place on earth", is promised to harness this endless power at low cost, officials say.

"It has been an incredible journey. Clearly (this is) a very historic day," Rizwan Fazal, the executive director of the Lake Turkana Power Project said ahead of a ceremony launching the project.

"It sends a very strong signal about Kenya being ripe for projects." The project, far more ambitious in scale than rivals elsewhere on the continent, has been closely