KenGen’s next chapter needs a public measure of performance

A leadership appointment is a moment of expectation. A board introduces a successor, describes the experience he brings and assures staff and investors that the institution will move forward. Those statements matter, but they are only the opening of the story. The more demanding question is what the institution expects the next leader to achieve and how people outside the boardroom will be able to judge the results. KenGen’s announced transition offers an opportunity to answer that question before the handover takes place.

The company has named Ronoh Kibet Charles as its next managing director and chief executive, with the appointment effective from 1 February 2027. Its 24 October announcement identifies him as the current general manager for commercial services and says he will succeed the retiring Peter Waweru Njenga. That timetable gives the board a defined transition period. It should use the period to explain continuity, responsibility and the priorities against which the incoming leadership will be assessed.

My view is that professional leadership in a major public enterprise deserves support, together with a clear expectation of performance. The country gains little from treating every appointment as a personality contest. It also gains little from accepting a strong biography as proof that future decisions will be sound. Experience is relevant evidence when choosing a leader. Delivery, governance and the quality of decisions are the evidence by which that leader should eventually be judged.

For the government, this is an opportunity to demonstrate a serious understanding of institutional success. Supporting an enterprise does not mean claiming each achievement as the product of a political speech. It means creating conditions in which the board and management can do their jobs, holding them to appropriate standards and respecting the boundaries of their responsibility. A company cannot plan confidently if its objectives change with every passing demand for a new announcement.

The first task should be to state the priorities clearly. A list of ambitions can be so broad that almost any outcome appears to satisfy it. A useful public account would identify a small number of objectives, explain why they matter and show the measures by which progress will be reported. Some objectives may take years, but they should still have intermediate milestones. The point is not to promise immediate transformation. It is to make the institution’s direction understandable.

Those measures should balance financial performance with operational responsibilities. A company can report an encouraging headline figure while leaving important questions about maintenance, project delivery or long-term obligations unanswered. Equally, necessary investment may create costs before its benefits appear. Readers need an explanation that connects the numbers to the work. An honest performance account would show the trade-offs rather than select only the indicator most convenient for that reporting period.

I am not proposing that commercial decisions be conducted through a public referendum. Boards and managers need room to exercise judgment, and some information cannot responsibly be disclosed while negotiations are under way. But confidentiality should have a reason and a boundary. It should not become a general answer to questions about strategy, governance or the progress of commitments already announced. The institution can explain the basis of a decision without publishing every negotiating position.

The handover itself should be orderly and visible at the appropriate level. The public does not need the private notes of every management meeting. It does need confidence that responsibilities, risks and ongoing programmes are being transferred deliberately. A transition plan should distinguish work that continues under existing approvals from proposals that require a fresh decision. That would help prevent the arrival of a new chief executive from being treated either as a complete break with the past or as a reason to avoid necessary review.

The outgoing leadership’s record should be treated fairly. A successor inherits both achievements and unfinished work. It would be misleading to attribute every later improvement to the new officeholder, just as it would be unfair to blame him automatically for every problem that began before his tenure. A clear baseline at the point of handover would improve the public discussion. It would show what was already under way, what remained unresolved and what the new management subsequently changed.

Staff are central to that continuity. Institutional knowledge does not reside only in the chief executive’s office. Engineers, commercial teams, project staff and other employees understand systems and risks that a leadership announcement cannot capture. The transition should provide a credible way for that knowledge to inform priorities. It should also make responsibilities clear enough that staff are not left guessing which decisions can proceed and which await a new direction.

A public enterprise needs an internal culture in which problems can be raised before they become public failures. That requires more than inviting employees to be innovative. It requires managers to respond seriously to inconvenient evidence, distinguish a good-faith warning from obstruction and make it possible to correct a mistaken assumption. The board should ask how it receives reliable information from below the senior leadership level. A polished report is not necessarily the same thing as an accurate one.

Project reporting is another area where clearer measures would help. An announcement of progress should identify the milestone reached and the work still outstanding. A revised deadline should explain the reason for the change. Where a programme depends on another institution, that dependency should be stated. These are ordinary standards, but they have a significant effect on trust. People are more likely to accept a difficult explanation when the institution has consistently told them what it knows and what remains uncertain.

KenGen’s announcement also points to commercial opportunities beyond its core generation work, including consultancy and the Olkaria Green Energy Park. These ambitions should be assessed as business propositions with their own assumptions, risks and performance measures. The appeal of diversification should not remove the need to explain how a particular activity supports the company’s overall purpose. Nor should a new initiative distract attention from the maintenance and operating requirements of the existing business.

For each major initiative, the board should be able to explain the problem it addresses, the expected benefit and the conditions required for success. Where outcomes depend on customers, partners or external infrastructure, the public account should not imply that management controls every variable. That precision protects the company from unrealistic expectations while making its own responsibilities clearer. A project can be promising without being certain, and responsible leadership should be comfortable acknowledging that distinction.

The role of government should be equally clear. Political leaders may set broad development priorities, but an enterprise still needs decisions that withstand commercial, technical and governance scrutiny. Pressure to produce an attractive announcement should not override that process. Conversely, management should not use complexity as a shield against legitimate questions from the public or the institutions charged with oversight. Both sides should respect the difference between accountability and day-to-day interference.

This is especially important when national debates about electricity compress several institutions into one explanation. A generation company’s leadership change does not, by itself, determine every part of a consumer’s electricity bill or every aspect of supply. Public communication should explain the company’s actual remit and the other decisions on which outcomes depend. Holding an institution accountable for its own work is more effective than expecting it to answer for an entire system without distinguishing responsibilities.

The board should also make its own performance visible. It selects and supervises management, approves major decisions and bears responsibility for governance. It should not disappear from the story once a chief executive has been introduced. If objectives are unclear, risks are poorly monitored or important decisions lack scrutiny, those are questions for directors as well as management. A strong board supports executives by setting a coherent mandate and challenges them when the evidence requires it.

Independent assurance should be treated as a source of improvement. Audit findings and other reviews can reveal weaknesses that are not obvious in ordinary performance reporting. The appropriate response is to identify corrective actions, assign responsibility and report whether the actions have been completed. Acknowledging a weakness need not become an admission that the entire institution has failed. It can demonstrate that the institution is capable of learning and that oversight is doing useful work.

Public discussion should be disciplined too. Supporters ought to avoid promising results that management has not committed to deliver. Critics should distinguish a documented failure from a prediction based on political preference. Both should read the underlying reports and preserve the dates and qualifications attached to the figures. A serious enterprise deserves a serious debate, in which praise can be earned and criticism can lead to a specific correction rather than another round of personal accusation.

The transition period can establish that standard. Before February, the board could publish an accessible explanation of the incoming leadership’s principal objectives, the baseline from which they begin and the reporting timetable. After the handover, the company could report against those objectives consistently. When circumstances change, it could explain why a target has been revised. Such a framework would not guarantee success, but it would make success and failure easier to recognise without relying on promotional language.

There is room for confidence here. A planned handover allows an institution to preserve experience while preparing for a new phase. The government should encourage that professionalism, and the public should give the incoming leadership a fair opportunity to demonstrate its work. Fairness, however, is not a request to suspend scrutiny. It means judging decisions against a clear mandate, allowing for genuine constraints and insisting on evidence when claims of achievement are made.

The public account should include how the company listens to communities affected by its activities. A credible process would record concerns, explain the route for addressing them and report aggregate progress without exposing personal details. Operational success and fair treatment of affected communities should be presented as connected responsibilities, with neither used to excuse neglect of the other.

KenGen’s next chapter should therefore begin with more than a welcome to its next chief executive. It should begin with a public understanding of the work ahead and the standards by which that work will be assessed. The most useful legacy of a well-managed transition is an institution that remains accountable after the appointment has left the headlines. That is the kind of continuity the government should support—and the kind of performance the public should expect.