The Rural Electrification Authority (REA) is one of the youngest State
corporations in Kenya, having been established under Section 66 of the Energy
Act (No 12 of 2006) as a result of the Government’s Sessional Paper No. 4 of
2004 on Energy.
The establishment of the Authority was based on the realisation that there was
still very low energy connectivity in most of rural Kenya that required urgent
attention in order to achieve the goals of the Economic Recovery Strategy
formulated in 2003.
The Authority was therefore created and became operational as a body corporate
in 2007 with the objective of accelerating the pace of rural electrification, a
function previously undertaken by the Ministry of Energy. Statistics on the
provision and access of electricity have tended to paint a grim picture of
Kenya’s rural areas, which for many years have been largely marginalised in
critical infrastructural facilities such as electricity, roads, health centres,
water and sanitation.