NAIROBI, Kenya — Thousands of Kenya Power customers were on Thursday 30, July 2026 left unable to purchase prepaid electricity tokens after the utility confirmed a technical failure in its token vending system, barely hours after restoring electricity following a nationwide blackout that disrupted large parts of the country.
The outage affected customers attempting to buy prepaid tokens through various payment channels, prompting complaints across social media as households feared running out of electricity.
The company acknowledged the disruption after customers reported repeated failed purchase attempts.
One customer appealed to the utility to investigate the issue, writing:
“Check your system of buying prepaid tokens, it is not going through.”
Kenya Power confirms technical hitch
Responding to the complaints, Kenya Power confirmed that its prepaid token vending platform had developed a technical fault.
“We sincerely apologize for the distress caused. We are currently experiencing a technical hitch with our token vending system, and our team is actively working to resolve it,” the company said.
The utility did not immediately indicate how many customers had been affected or provide a timeline for restoring the token purchase service.
The disruption comes at a particularly sensitive time, as many prepaid customers routinely purchase electricity in small daily or weekly amounts rather than maintaining large credit balances.
For households whose existing units were nearly exhausted, the system failure raised concerns about losing electricity despite having money available to buy tokens.
Comes after nationwide blackout
The prepaid token disruption occurred only hours after Kenya Power announced that electricity had been fully restored following Wednesday 29, July 2026 night’s widespread power outage.
The blackout, which began at around 8:30 p.m., affected customers across:
- Nairobi
- Coast region
- Mt Kenya
- Parts of the Central Rift
At the height of the outage, Kenya Power said electricity supply had remained stable only in parts of the North Rift and Western Kenya.
The blackout disrupted businesses, transport services, traffic management systems and households, forcing police officers to manually direct traffic at several intersections after signalised junctions lost power.
In a customer update issued early Thursday morning, Kenya Power said restoration work had been completed by 2:00 a.m.
“We are pleased to report that power supply was fully restored to all affected customers by 2:00 am today. We truly appreciate your patience and support as our teams worked to restore service.”
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During restoration efforts, the company progressively reconnected different regions of the country.
By 11:32 p.m. on Wednesday, electricity had already been restored to:
- Mt Kenya
- Rift Valley
- Western Kenya
- South Nyanza
- Parts of Nairobi
Cause of blackout still unknown
Despite confirming that electricity supply has since normalised, Kenya Power has not disclosed what triggered Wednesday’s widespread blackout.
The company only stated that technical teams had been deployed to investigate the fault and restore electricity as quickly as possible.
The latest system disruption is likely to renew public scrutiny over the reliability of both Kenya’s electricity transmission infrastructure and the digital platforms that support prepaid electricity purchases.
Kenya’s prepaid electricity system serves millions of customers nationwide, making uninterrupted token vending critical to maintaining household and business power supply.
By Thursday afternoon, Kenya Power said its technical teams were continuing to work on restoring normal prepaid token services.
