Australian firm back in Kenya with windmills

George Washington Griffith set up his operations in Australia in 1870, planting the seed for what would become a large engineering empire now with interests including in South Africa. More than 120 years on, the company he founded was full of enthusiasm to expand into Kenya and propagate its windmill-driven water-pumping units.

Kenya, they figured, was a country that sorely needed clean water; it does up to date.

Naturally, the enthusiastic investor jetted into Nairobi, only to encounter nonplussed bureaucrats of the Kanu administration who would hear none of it. Unless, they opined, they were offered shares ex-gratia and had their directors admitted in the business — much after the fashion of Mobitelea in Vodafone. 

After a short lecture on business ethics and their operating principles, Southern Cross politely informed them that was not possible; being a major player they would go it alone as they did worldwide. 

The matter died there. Or so the investors thought.

What followed was sheer exhibition of the destructive nature of the Kanu regime, which may take years to be revealed in full.

The next thing the company heard was that Treasury in its increasing wisdom had slapped 80 per cent duty on imported windmills. That, in the midst of accelerating deforestation, rising fossil fuel price and a skyrocketing US dollar against the shilling. Not to mention a global trend of offering tax credit to wind and other alternative sources of energy.

“They taxed the wind,” says a director of Southern Cross Industries John Hurst, who was a consultant for the project then.

Effectively, the kind of windmill you see in the movie Gods Must Be Crazy would be common if that never happened. 

In southern Africa where Kalahari is, they are common in game parks where even large animals like elephants live in mortal fear of the same and hence are careful not to tamper with them.

And with huge underground reservoirs of water at the Coast and surface water in Nyanza, this cheap water-pumping mode should have picked up.

Instead, windmills would be subjected to duty until the Narc administration came to power in 2003 and phased it out. Mr Hurst believes beside the unbridled greed for immediate gain by the politicians of the day, vested interests in diesel pumps was the next motivation.

True, Treasury was for long driven by self-interest: like when Casinos were ordered to deal in dollars only for the directive to be miraculously reversed after they changed hands. Result? Former Kanu operatives own ill-gotten shares in dozens of companies at the expense of clean and sustainable investment.

The ramification of breaking wind, figuratively, was far reaching. Even Kenya Electricity Generating Company ignored this renewable, cheap and environmentally friendly source of energy. It is only that they are moving to install the same in Kinangop.

“When we saw it (waiver) we could not believe it. We thought this Government is really interested in the welfare of its people,” said Mr Hurst of former Finance minister David Mwiraria’s decision to remove the duty. 

“By now if we had been allowed to set up there would be about 4,000 units and children would be having clean water.” Unfortunately, all that has literally gone with the wind and might be so much water under the bridge.

The $30 million turnover organisation soon hooked up with a local player, Bob Harries Engineering. The Thika-based Mike Harries fabricates the well-known Kijito windmills and, according to Mr Hurst, has sacrificed a lot of his property to invest in what is referred to as appropriate technology.  

In the new venture, Bob Harries will help with storage of the thousands of galvanised units they are targeting to haul in, installation and engineering training. He says the cooperation has an eye on a possible future joint venture. 

Mr Hurst says they are now ready to go all out and sell the technology. Hopefully, the windmills, like in southern Africa, would apart from providing water to rural areas, create a large industry for accessories and mechanics, which he says, should be replicated here.

He has crucially worked in the windy drought-prone mountainous kingdom of Lesotho, where the firm put up more than 800 units. There, unlike in Nairobi, the government according to published reports “begged” him to do it.

“We are coming in full force,” said Mr Hurst, an engineer chronicled decades back by hometown paper, the Birmingham Mail as having given “life to thousands”. What the Narc administration has done is to open a window of opportunity into the Common Markets for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the Indian Ocean islands for the partners. 

Whereas in the past it has operated freely in the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), Comesa has always been elusive despite their long-term desire to tap the Kenya market in particular.

In the domestic market, the firm is eyeing the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) kitty to propagate the American technology adapted to water thousands of sheep in the vast Australian farms. Southern Cross wants to aggressively sell the units to schools where they want to use reservoirs as an advertising forum, to pay for the maintenance cost. The cost of installing the units, which comes with 10 year guarantees, is usually anywhere between Sh350,000 and Sh1.5 million. The borehole cylinders can draw water at depths of 100 metres up to 45,000 litres a day.

Apart from communal installations, they are also targeting commercial water vendors, singularly in Central province who fetch about Sh5,000 per tanker. The firm has observed that diesel engines have a high theft rate unlike windmills, which have lasted up to 50 years. Vandals find little use for the mills. 

The technology is old but functional: with wind-driven mortar pumping water into a reservoir day and night when there is wind.

In places like California, US, windmill technology was once subsidised because it is environment-friendly — another reason South Africa’s President Thambo Mbeki has supported installation of the units in helping rural people in irrigation and clean water provision. 

Krugger National Park has adopted them to support the animals especially during drought. The company has installed more than 90,000 units in the country.

Most of the world is pushing in the direction of the environmentally friendly renewable energy sources. These have included solar energy, which has equally been encouraged through tax incentives even locally. Solar, despite constituting less than, 1 per cent of the global energy production, is the fastest growing energy source but remains hampered by costs. “Solar is all capital cost,” said BP Solar Energy president Harry Shimp four years ago. Recently, a sharp rise in raw material cost has pushed prices north.

However, windmill contrivances still hold the upper edge vis-à-vis solar panels (still prone to theft) because of their longer shelf life. In Kenya, there are small-scale efforts to use windmills in energy production, mostly in the areas the new partners are targeting. 

Mr Hurst — whose company also markets irrigation equipment — is enthusiastic about the future of the windmill and will soon start holding seminars to educate potential users. “I believe windmills have a great future. We would want to make Kenya the centre of alternative energy source in the region,” he said.

A study by the Dutch government in 1993 showed high potential in the country which, if harnessed, would push Kenya in the direction of wind powers of Netherlands, Spain and Denmark.

Busia, Kakamega, Uasin Gishu, Machakos, Nairobi, Kirinyaga, Nyandarwa, Nyeri, Murang’a and Mombasa are some of the areas with great potential.