Monkey In Kenya Sparks 3-Hour Nationwide Blackout

Kenya's power generation company Tuesday said a monkey caused a three-hour nationwide blackout in the country.

The Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen) said in a statement on Facebook that a monkey climbed on to the roof of the Gitaru Power Station in central Kenya and fell on a transformer. This caused the transformer to trip, further causing other machines to trip on overload and resulted in the loss of 180 megawatts of energy.

The company is reportedly the country's largest generator of electricity, providing around 80% of energy consumed in the east African nation. The 225-megawatt Gitaru station is KenGen’s largest. The blackout lasted more than three hours Tuesday before power was restored.

The animal survived the incident. “Monkey is alive and taken in by KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service),” a KenGen Facebook post said.

“KenGen power installations are secured by electric fencing which keeps away marauding wild animals,” the company said. “We regret this isolated incident and the company is looking at ways of further enhancing security at all our power plants.”

Kenya is one of Africa’s fastest growing economies. However, according to the World Bank, only 23% of Kenya’s 45 million population has access to electricity.