Kenya

Kenya is an East African country located at the equator. The economy, dependent on agriculture and tourism, is prone to boom and bust cycles, and about half of the workers in the agricultural sector (which employs three-quarters of the country) remain at the subsistence level, despite economic reforms that have otherwise put Kenya on a path of steady economic growth. Kenya has a significant drug problem, with widespread harvesting of marijuana for domestic use. The United Nations estimates that 5 to 10 percent of the population between the ages of 15 and 64 are annual marijuana users. In addition, a substantial number of youth, particularly in Nairobi, use inhalants. Kenya is also a transit country for South Asian heroin destined for Europe and North America and Indian methaqualone bound for South Africa. Given Kenya's status as a regional financial center, there is also significant potential for money-laundering activities. In addition, the country is one of the world's most corrupt, with the average Kenyan paying 16 bribes a month. In a country where a quarter of the citizens live on less than $1 a day, bribery is a billion dollar a year industry.

[Page 448]That bribery has contributed to the drug problem. Although Kenya has an anti-narcotics police unit, it has been able to do little, and police officers at various levels are regularly discovered to be actively involved in the drug trade—whether being paid to look the other way, dealing drugs while on the side, conspiring to traffic drugs to or from the country, or in other capacities. In one infamous case in the 1990s, police and forest rangers hired themselves out to guard a marijuana plantation that had been planted on a forest reserve—after deforesting 600 acres of it to make room for the crops.

While marijuana is grown domestically, the harder drugs are trafficked in: cocaine from South America, heroin from southeast Asia. The country's supply of these drugs originates in the form of payments by the cartels to their intermediaries and corrupt officials. In 2010 a number of Mombasa politicians and businessmen were accused of being responsible for the bulk of the drug trafficking in their area. Because of the profit margin, drug dealers can be found in all walks of life—old women selling vegetables at the market, preteen schoolchildren selling drugs to older schoolmates to have money to bring home to their families.

Drug abuse has been slowly but steadily on the rise for 20 years, particularly among teenagers, who are typically hashish smokers. Chewing of khat, a leaf (locally called miraa) that is a natural stimulant, is common among young people and adults. About 1 percent of the population is believed to be addicted to heroin, most of them injecting the drug—and 42.9 percent of Kenyan intravenous heroin users are human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive. Heroin usage, needle sharing, and sex with heroin users have contributed greatly to the country's AIDS epidemic: about 7 percent of the population was HIV-positive in 2010.

Simple mismanagement is a common problem in Kenya's efforts against narcotics. In 2010 Frank Njenga, the chairman of the National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse Authority (Nacadaa) discovered his term as chairman had lapsed, six months after the fact; the government had not yet appointed a successor, nor was it clear that anyone was aware they were supposed to. This came after 28 staff members left the agency over the previous two years, most of them having been fired. Meanwhile, Nacadaa's national coordinator (a subordinate position to Njenga's), Jennifer Kimani, faced allegations of impropriety in acquiring a Nairobi office, and multiple complaints from her young staff members that she had interfered with their schoolwork.

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