James Opiyo Wandayi currently serves as Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Energy and Petroleum, bringing to the docket a reputation for sharp instincts, tactical clarity, and relentless reformist drive. He inherited a ministry long associated with scandal, inefficiency, and darkness, and set about transforming it into a pillar of national renewal and economic propulsion. Hailing from Ugunja, with a storied parliamentary career as MP and Minority Leader—and a formidable tenure as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee where he exposed vast misappropriation of public funds—Wandayi entered the ministry as a decisive enforcer rather than a ceremonial appointee.
From the outset, he positioned himself as a disruptor of entrenched cartels that had inflated fuel prices, crippled manufacturing with persistent blackouts, and excluded rural Kenya from reliable power while elites profited. His first moves were preemptive and surgical. Immediate audits of Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited (KPRL) and Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) uncovered ghost contracts, bloated procurement, and technical losses that consumed nearly a quarter of generated electricity. Targeted reforms, including smart digital metering pilots, reduced losses to 18 percent in key zones, delivering tangible tariff relief to households and small businesses under economic strain.
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