Work 04 · Kenya · 2025
Did Kenya's Feed-in-Tariff deliver green growth?
Kenya's 2008 renewable energy policy shifted its power mix toward renewables — but did not cut absolute emissions, widen rural electricity access, or speed growth.
A quasi-experimental evaluation of whether Kenya's 2008 Feed-in Tariff delivered a "double dividend" of lower emissions and stronger economic outcomes. The main design is a Difference-in-Differences comparison with Ghana, which took a fossil-led path over the same period. It is supplemented by a synthetic control built from a donor pool of 15 Sub-Saharan African countries, using World Bank data for 2000–2023.
The energy transition was real. Renewable generation rose by about 55 kWh per capita and the fossil fuel share of electricity fell by 34 percentage points. It did not translate into lower absolute CO₂ emissions or better rural electrification, however, and Kenya grew more slowly than Ghana. The synthetic control gives only weak evidence of an effect on fossil fuel generation. The takeaway is that the policy changed the energy mix but faced real tradeoffs against growth and broader development goals.