The Turkwel River is a river flowing from Mount Elgon

Mount Elgon

Mount Elgon is an extinct shield volcano on the border of Uganda and Kenya, north of Kisumu and west of Kitale.- Physical features :It is the oldest and largest solitary volcano in East Africa, covering an area of around 3500 km²....

 in the border of Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

 and Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

 to Lake Turkana

Lake Turkana

Lake Turkana , formerly known as Lake Rudolf, is a lake in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, with its far northern end crossing into Ethiopia. It is the world's largest permanent desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake...

. The river is called Suam River from its source to the border with the West Pokot District

West Pokot District

West Pokot District is an administrative district in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya. Its capital town is Kapenguria. The district has a population of 308,086 and an area of 9,064 km² . Pokot people inhabit the area....

 of Kenya. The name Turkwel is derived from the Turkana

Turkana language

Turkana is the language of the Turkana people of Kenya, numbering about 340,000.It is one of the Eastern Nilotic languages, and is closely related to Karamojong, Jie and Teso of Uganda, to Toposa spoken in the extreme southeast of Sudan, and to Nyangatom in the Sudan/Ethiopia Omo valley borderland;...

 name for the river, Tirkol, which means "river of many fish."

A controversial hydro power plant

Turkwel Hydro Power Plant

The Turkwel Hydro Power Plant is Kenya's largest hydro power plant having an installed electric capacity of 106 MW.The dam, Kenya's largest, is located on the Turkwel River in NW Kenya...

 was built by the Kenyan government in the early 1990s with the help of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. The plan was to harness the waters of the Turkwel. The project was initially supposed to cost 4 billion Kenyan shilling

Kenyan shilling

The shilling is the currency of Kenya. It is divisible into 100 cents.-Coins:The first coins were issued in 1966 in denominations of 5, 10, 25 and 50 cents, and 1 and 2 shillings. Twenty-five cents coins were not minted after 1969; 2 shillings coins were last minted in 1971...

s, but ended up costing more than 20 billion.