Work on the construction of the largest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa has started on the eastern part of Kenya’s shining Lake Turkana.

The construction of the almost $1 billion private and public sector joint venture development is likely to be completed in 2017.

International organizations, including the World Bank, have said this mega-infrastructure is exactly what Africa wants in order to unlock the continent’s economic prosperity. Some economies in Sub-Saharan Africa have posted GDP annual growth rates of 5 percent in the past 10 years, according to the World Bank.

Increased energy production in the continent would bolster economic growth even better, the World Bank noted.
Initially envisioned towards the close of the 1990s, Lake Turkana Wind Power and other major projects have been stymied by a chain of sleaze involving high-powered people during the reign of three presidents in Kenya. It was also blocked by an eruption of fighting that left over 1000 people dead after a highly-disputed national poll in 2007.

After the violent eruption, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto were accused of committing crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Accusations against Kenyatta were shelved last year.

Kwame Parker, East Africa head of power and infrastructure at Standard Bank, Africa’s biggest bank by assets, described the difficulties facing the project in the past couple of years as tough. Standard Bank assisted with arranging financing for the Turkana power plant. “At Turkana you get literally one of the best winds you can get in the world, but almost everything else is hard,” Parker told Wall Street Journal (WSJ).