The Kenya government is striving to ensure that the country has adequate electricity supply to fuel economic growth by expanding power production and increasing connectivity to the national electricity grid.

Data from the Ministry of Energy shows that the growing annual demand for electricity translates into more than 100,000 consumer connections every year, with projections that the connection rate will double by 2012??.

The country’s demand for power distribution poles is far greater than national production. Kenya imports power distribution poles worth USD53 million (KSh4 billion) every year representing huge incoming earning potential for farming communities.

To ensure that local farmers can effectively exploit this opportunity, Africa Harvest used its whole value chain approach to work with farmers to harness available technologies to produce high quality, more competitive eucalyptus power distribution poles.

Efforts by the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) to create a sustainable supply of the Australian eucalyptus species such as Eucalyptus grandis, Eucalyptus saligna and Eucalyptus camaldulensis have been constrained by seed quality and seed availability.

Additionally, Kenya has only had two nurseries that produce and supply eucalyptus hybrids in Kenya exacerbating the shortage in tree seedlings. This acute shortage of seedlings forces the country to import seed from Australia and South Africa at a high cost to the country.

Cloning Eucalyptus for Power Poles

Producing tree hybrids usually take in excess of 20 years. The use of seeds, on the other hand, does not guarantee consistent tree characteristics such as height, girth, and bending strength.

Scientists are as a result turning to cloning, a technology that produces genetically identical trees with most of the desired qualities. This not only guarantees consistent height and girth for electricity poles but also assures farmers of quality tree seedlings for planting. Furthermore, cloning greatly speeds up seedling production to keep up with the growing demand for trees.

Kenya first introduced eucalyptus clones from South Africa in 1997. Selection for the best of the cloned eucalyptus trees was undertaken by the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) from 2001 at Muguga, on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Kericho, Sotik and Turbo were sites for breeding the trees from which the national stock of cloned eucalyptus would be generated. This was done under the Kenya Tree Biotechnology Program Trust.

To date, Kenya has more than 100 hectares of eucalyptus seed stands, which yield about 700Kg of seed every year. The seeds have a potential for producing six million tree seedlings per annum, according to KEFRI. Kenya has some 6,000 hectares of land under eucalyptus.