Thousands of Kenyans experienced continued disruptions on Thursday morning after a nationwide blackout the previous night. Although power was restored by 6 AM, many prepaid electricity customers struggled to buy Kenya Power tokens through mobile money platforms like M-Pesa.
The blackout, triggered by a technical fault on the national grid, affected Nairobi, the Coast, Mt. Kenya, and parts of the Central Rift from around 8:30 PM on Wednesday, July 29. Power was gradually restored overnight and was fully back by early Thursday.
However, attempts to top up prepaid meters were met with various error messages indicating system failures rather than insufficient funds. Some users received notices citing system errors and were advised to try alternative channels, while others were told to try again later without further explanation.
These issues pointed to problems between the mobile money payment systems and Kenya Power's token vending backend. It remains unclear whether the failures resulted from increased demand following the outage or from separate technical glitches.
Kenya Power has yet to publicly address the token purchase disruptions, even as complaints continue to circulate on social media. The incident highlights the vulnerability of prepaid electricity users who depend on both consistent power supply and reliable payment systems to maintain service.
