Waste pickers play an important role in waste management in Kenya. They not only help to keep towns and cities clean, they also play a big role in the recycling process.

In 2019, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers recovered over 6,000 metric tonnes of plastic for recycling. This would not have been possible without the work of refuse handlers. There is, however, not enough data to quantify the contribution of waste picking to waste management.

With a population of five million, Nairobi is estimated to generate between 2,000 and 4,000 tonnes of waste daily. Combined, the cities of Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu generate 10,000 tonnes of trash each day, with a significant portion being handled by waste pickers.

Waste pickers in Kenya fall into two main categories — those that are part of the urban formal waste management labour force and those working in the informal economy. The formal workers are either employed by county governments or consist of licenced and unlicensed private operators that serve homes and commercial facilities. The waste they collect is transported to commissioned dumpsites where sorting takes place. Formal refuse handlers work in a coordinated manner. They enjoy a regular income and other benefits, including membership in unions that agitate for their welfare. They, however, receive a minimum wage and often fall into the category of lower cadre earners in both the public and private sector. It is projected that there are close to 100,000 formal waste pickers in Kenya.

On the other hand, the existence of an informal waste picking economy is historically linked to poverty and is mostly associated with vulnerable groups such as street families and slum dwellers, many of them women and children. Because of the informal nature of their work, their exact number is unknown. These workers collect garbage from the streets, bins, markets, and from waste transfer stations as well as from dumpsites. They are rarely part of welfare groups. Where such exist, they tend to be cartels that benefit the leaders at the expense of members.

It is projected that there are close to 100,000 formal waste pickers in Kenya.

In addition, there are cases where informal waste pickers are exploited by the larger society. Such exploitation comes in the form of work without pay in places such as municipal markets. In 2019, Clean Up Kenya, a lobby group, documented cases in Kibra, Dagoretti and Otiende, all in Nairobi, where sections of the informal business community are engaged in this abuse.

A good case study of the informal waste picking economy is Langata Tegemeo, a group of about 50 youths who serve over 500 households in Kijijini slums, Southlands. The group collects waste from each household at a fee of KSh20 per week and takes it to a government-allocated waste transfer station.

They frequently receive donations in the form of protective gear and work equipment from well-wishers, including politicians. In return, they engage in voluntary street waste picking activities, not just in the slum but also in the affluent neighbourhoods of Langata.

Such groups exist in most informal settlements where government waste management services are lacking. They are not recognised by the government. There was, however, an attempt to provide some form of subsidy in 2018 when a number of manufacturers teamed up to establish a fund that was supposed to increase recycling by doubling the price of certain kinds of plastics. Regrettably, the scheme is yet to benefit the waste pickers as they lack access to the said manufacturers.

Another under-appreciated form of waste picking labour is provided by street families. According to the 2019 Kenya Population and Housing Census, 20,000 people live on streets in Kenya. Some of these homeless people pick plastic bottles and scrap metal for sale to brokers, who then sell them to recyclers at a profit.

Another waste picking initiative worth mentioning is Flipflopi, which describes itself as “a movement for change with a mission to end single-use plastic and lead a plastic-reuse revolution”. In 2017, Flipflopi made a boat from ten tonnes of plastic picked by volunteers from the beaches. The boat sailed along the East African coast in 2019 to raise awareness of the global plastics problem, earning Kenya international praise.

Some of these homeless people pick plastic bottles and scrap metal for sale to brokers, who then sell them to recyclers at a profit.

Thousands of clean-ups are conducted every year in Kenya, recovering hundreds of tonnes of refuse from streets, rivers, and communities. While many are grassroots initiatives, Clean Up Kenya is among organisations that recruit nationally for clean-ups.

Lastly, we have waste pickers who work on dumpsites. There is at least one commissioned dumpsite in each of the 47 counties, the largest being the Dandora dumpsite in Nairobi.

The landfill was commissioned in the late seventies and is still operational despite being declared full in 2001. Located in a poor neighbourhood, the Dandora dumpsite receives almost all of the city’s household, commercial and municipal waste.

Discussions on the proposed decommissioning the dump have been ongoing for the last twenty years with little success. Despite the dumpsite being an environmental and health hazard, it is estimated that between 3,000 and 6,000 waste pickers and their families depend on it for a livelihood. Many work without protective gear, thus exposing themselves to dangerous chemicals which have a negative impact on their health. According to a study commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme, high concentrations of heavy metals such as lead and mercury were found in children living near the dumpsite.

Stanley Didi, a coordinator at Shepherd CBO, and a former street boy, says: “We believe the government has committed a crime against the waste picking community and the people of Dandora.”

The dumpsite is easily accessible to anyone, including children. Vicious gangs and cartels control operations at the dumpsite. They dictate who is to pick what, where and when. Sometimes riots and fights erupt whenever trucks bring in “lucrative” garbage.

While, there is no data available on the amount of recyclable waste salvaged from the dumpsite, it is assumed that a sizeable part of the 6,000 tonnes of plastic recovered in 2019 came from Dandora.

Some dumps are however better coordinated. A good example is the Ngong dumpsite in Kajiado County, which has since been closed due to environmental concerns. At its peak, it used to receive 50 to 100 tonnes of waste daily.

“We believe the government has committed a crime against the waste picking community and the people of Dandora.”

Pickers had divided themselves into groups, with each group allowed onto the dumpsite based on a daily roster, with women-only days also foreseen. This coordination helped reduce conflicts among the pickers. The workers had a welfare group that supported about 200 members. There was a playground for children who accompanied their mothers to work, and they were not allowed on the dumpsite.

Kenya is yet to fully appreciate the important role waste picking contributes to waste management. The existing waste management laws do not acknowledge the role of waste pickers despite the fact that a large percentage of the close to 10 million tonnes of waste produced annually are processed by waste pickers.

Most of these workers live in extreme poverty, many without accommodation. There is need to incorporate them into national and county waste management plans and also involve them in decision making which could include supporting efforts to establish a national waste picking movement to advance the rights of this essential labour force.

President William Ruto’s government should not dismiss snake farming outright; it could be an important contributor to the economy. And a life-saver.

The reaction of Kenyans to the Roots Party’s proposal to adopt snake farming in order to contribute to the economy was not surprising. Most people are squeamish about snakes, perhaps because of religious beliefs, or because of trauma from having been bitten by one, or because of knowing someone who did not survive a snakebite. Others simply suffer from ophidiophobia,  an extreme fear of snakes. Then there are those on the extreme end of the spectrum; those who eat snakes, like communities in Central and West Africa, Southeast Asia and China. There are the more adventurous ones who sustain a thriving, international trade in exotic snakes that are kept as pets. But regardless of our feelings towards snakes, they are important to the ecosystem as they manage rodent populations and are a food source for raptors, species of small mammals like mongoose and honey badgers, and other reptiles.

I do not hold fort for the Roots Party of Kenya, but embracing snake farming is not a farfetched idea, and I will tell you why. First, snakebite envenoming is a global health crisis, and secondly snake venom is important in pharmaceutical research; proteins found in snake venom are used in immunosuppressants and other medicines such Captopril, Aggrastat, and Eptifibatide which are used to treat diseases like arthritis, hypertension, heart failure and the effects of diabetes on the kidneys.

Snakebite envenoming results from the injection of highly toxic secretions from the bite of a venomous snake or from the spray of venom into the eyes or broken skin. Snakebite envenoming was declared a neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization (WHO) in June 2017. Globally, the statistics indicate that over 5 million people are bitten by snakes, 138,000 of whom die from envenoming annually, while at least 400,000 are permanently disabled, or suffer lifelong effects. Of those who die, 30,000 are from Africa. It is a disease of poverty as it mainly affects the rural poor, who work in farms or whose dwellings do not provide adequate protection from crawling critters, who cannot afford proper footwear, and who will resort to traditional healers when bitten by a snake because the cost of healthcare is  not within their reach; in many cases, healthcare is literally far away.

Snakebite envenoming was declared a neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization in June 2017.

In Kenya, data on snakebite envenoming is not accurate and is often difficult to obtain. In the preface to a report by  the Ministry of Health titled Guidelines for Prevention Diagnosis and Management of Snakebite Envenoming in Kenya, the Director of Medical Services, Dr Jackson Kioko, puts incidences of snakebite in Kenya at 15,000 annually. It is important to note that throughout the document, this is the only reference to any data on snakebite incidences. The estimate from media reports and from organizations such as Wildlife Direct is that at least 1,000 people die from snakebite envenoming every year, and thousands of others are left with permanent injuries, both physical and mental.

Mutha Ward in Kitui South is about 67 kilometers from the county capital, Kitui, and 280 kilometers from Nairobi. It has a population of about 34,000 people, most of whom are small-scale farmers and traders. Like much of Kitui, the landscape of Mutha is arid and semi- arid scrubland. The main economic activity is small-scale agriculture and bee keeping. There is also an abundance of snakes in the region (particularly puff adders, black mambas and cobras) and as a result, incidences of snakebite and snakebite envenoming are frequent. According to one resident, there are at least two snakebite victims every week, mostly from puff adders. That is at least 104 victims a year.

The nearest referral hospital is in Kitui town, which is almost 70 kilometres away. Mutha Health Centre and Ndakani, Kiati, Kalambani and Kaatene dispensaries are the health facilities in the area; they do not stock snakebite antivenom. Further, as Justina Wamae told us, the cost of antivenom is exorbitant, retailing at between KSh10,000 to KSh14,000 (approximately US$100 to US$140) per vial. On average, at least five vials are required for a single treatment. Mutha is representative of the situation in Kitui. The same is true in Baringo, Samburu, Kajiado, the Coast, Northern and Western Kenya.

Access to snakebite antivenom is confined to referral hospitals which are at a considerable distance from the health centres where it would be closer to the victims and where it is much needed. Even then, the supply is not enough to meet the demand. Kenya does not manufacture antivenom and relies on imports from South Africa and India. We do not import enough antivenom from South Africa, which is the most effective as venomous snakes found in that country are the same ones to be found in Kenya, and nor do are referral hospitals adequately stocked. Indian antivenom is ineffective because the venomous snakes found in India are not the same as those in Kenya; for example, antivenom for a Russel’s viper, one of India’s most deadly snakes, is ineffective against puff adder venom, even though they are both vipers. The Kenya Snakebite Research and Interventions Centre is working to produce East Africa’s first antivenom, and trials are ongoing. This is progress, although it will take a while before Kenya can adequately stock its hospitals and health facilities with a homegrown solution.

Kenya does not manufacture antivenom and relies on imports from South Africa and India.

The County Government of Kitui has built the Mutomo Reptile Park and Snake Venom Research Centre in Mutomo, about 30 kilometres northwest of Mutha and, in April 2021, invited bids from private investors to run the facility. As far as I have been able to establish, there were no bidders. The most logical partner, in my view, would have been KEMRI, but given how much our national budget is averse to medical research, it comes as no surprise that KEMRI was not a contender. The potential contribution of the newly-opened research centre to the economy of Kitui, the impact it would have had on medical research this side of the world, can only be imagined. There are snake venom research centres in Guinea, Nigeria, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. However, in the entire African continent, only South Africa commercially produces snakebite antivenom, and given the snakebite statistics, supply does not adequately meet demand.

The Kenyan government should, therefore, consider snake venom research for the manufacture of antivenom and other important medical interventions as a critical agenda. It will save lives.

We are just over a month into the new administration under President William Ruto. At this early stage we can see that some things have changed, others, not so much.

One definite change is that our new president’s speeches have been a lot more policy-heavy than perhaps we had become accustomed to. His inauguration speech mentioned the scaling up of the allocation to the judiciary, committed to the appointing of the six judges of the Court of Appeal (which he immediately did), made the Inspector-General of the police the accounting officer (again, done), as well as mentioning fuel subsidies, fertilizer costs, youth unemployment, financial inclusion and a number of other important policy aspects.

But it is the president’s speech during the inauguration of the 13th Parliament that I wish to draw attention to. It was just as policy-heavy, spending little time on the election just concluded, and more time on what the president’s legislative agenda would be. This is very important. Past presidents who have sailed into State House with a legislative super-majority perhaps may not have realized the opportunity that the times had afforded them. The current president seems fully aware that his ambitious legislative agenda will need to be approved by a parliament in which his coalition does not have the super-majority of years gone by. The president presented his legislative goals to the bicameral parliament very early. I list some of the president’s stated goals below.

The president stated that under his administration, he is keen for agricultural productivity – of farmers, fishermen and herders – to rise “dramatically”. He also stated that parliament should do its duty by supporting the provision of land for affordable housing. Perhaps most memorably, he stated his intention to change the tax regime by taxing wealth, consumption, income, and trade – in that order. And he decried the land fragmentation that has been occasioned by Kenyans seeking and succeeding to purchase 50×100 plots for themselves.

Underlying each and every one of the issues that the president mentioned in the above paragraph is the vital and essential issue of land. Questions of its availability, its productivity, its cost and the alternative uses to which it may be put are unavoidable and inescapable as enablers to the attainment of the president’s agenda. As far as productivity is concerned, large tracts of productive land lie fallow and unused – “owned” by those who will not put it to use. The government will struggle to buy land for affordable housing – because land is far too expensive in precisely those areas where housing is so sorely needed. I have lived in a house in which the door to the shower could not fully be opened because at some point that door would knock the showerhead when you opened it. The price of land, dear reader, is in that shower-room. There are numerous apartment blocks in Nairobi in which if the bonnet of the car parked first is not nestling snugly under the stairway leading into the apartment, the gate simply will not close. The price of land, dear reader, is in that apartment’s parking lot – and elsewhere in the apartment, I’m sure. (Indeed, the price of land is so high that it has proven and will continue to prove to be an impediment to the improvement of the nation’s infrastructure; land compensation cost KSh33 billion during the construction of the standard gauge railway, for example.) And the land fragmentation that the president rightly regrets is a combination of both these factors: the fact that large tracts of land are unavailable to a public that would otherwise have put them to more productive use; and the fact that land prices are high and rising so that it is seen as a more durable asset in which to park family savings, such that smaller and smaller pieces of land have more and more value. In short, resolving the land problem in Kenya is now fundamental to any administration’s success. A day of reckoning must soon come, and it is better to get out in front of it.

The government will struggle to buy land for affordable housing – because land is far too expensive in precisely those areas where housing is so sorely needed.

There is a simple solution to each of these problems, although I must caveat this statement by saying that “simple” does not necessarily mean “easy”. Land is a natural resource; it is not manufactured by anyone. There exist schools of economic thought that state that the taxation of such natural resources for the national benefit is the best way to realize their value on behalf of the people. Let us examine this thinking further by means of a thought experiment.

Imagine, for example, that there was a blanket tax rate on land of, say, KSh1,000 per acre per month, or KSh12,000 per annum.

(It would be important for such a new tax to be offset by a commensurate reduction in income tax, to stay within the president’s stated principle of taxing wealth first and income second-to-last.)

We shall now examine the effects of this tax for Family A which owns the quarter of an acre on which they have built their family residence. Such a tax would amount to KSh250 per month, or KSh3,000 per annum. In all likelihood, Family A would be able to pay it, even without offsetting it from income tax. But let us now examine the effects of this tax for Family B which owns 100 acres of land. Such a tax rate would amount to KSh100,000 per month, or KSh1.2 million per year. Given that – as earlier stated – this amount is to be offset from that family’s income tax, such a family would only be unwilling to pay this tax if they were not already farming the land, or in some other way making it produce at least the KSh1,000 (per acre per month) needed to pay the tax. In other words, only the owners of idle land (or, more fairly, the idle owners of productive land) would be disturbed by this change in the tax regime.

(It gets even more interesting when the tax rate is a flat percentage based on the value of the land. Let us say the rate is 2 per cent per annum. A parcel of land valued at KSh1 million would attract an annual tax of KSh20,000. A parcel valued at KSh100 million would attract a rate of KSh2 million per annum. This is even more fair and just because an empty lot in Nairobi city centre is losing us far more productivity than an acre of land in Samburu. This is what is known in economics as a land-value tax, and it is the holy grail of taxation policy. But I digress.

Upon the introduction of a land tax, in very short order, one of three things would happen. Families like Family B could sell their land. The immediate availability of large tracts of land for sale in order to avoid the tax would have the economically salubrious effect of depressing the price of land quite quickly, availing it for careful planning. We would have to take care to avoid the mistakes of the past, where planning for the use of this most important of resources has been largely non-existent and land allocation has fallen prey to corruption. Even where newly-available land is to be bought by a new owner, it should be carefully allocated to those who would actually farm it productively, and such allocations should not be corrupt. Japan achieved this by having these decisions made by local land committees, and this fair redistribution of land kicked off that nation’s economic take-off.

Alternatively, Family B could lease the land for the tax rate or slightly more. Although theoretical, a land lease rate of KSh1,000 per acre per month is quite fair and would enable the land to be put to use by a good agriculturalist – the youthful unemployed of our day. (Such an approach while helpful, would not be a silver bullet, and would need to be allied with extension services, capital provision, assistance with market development, and other support.) This would at once help to reduce unemployment – the single most important economic problem of our time – and attain the target of increasing the national agricultural productivity that the president talked about in his speech.

An empty lot in Nairobi city centre is losing us far more productivity than an acre of land in Samburu.

Lastly, Family B could put the land to the uses to which it should have been put all along, in order to generate the KSh1,000 per month required to pay the tax – and keep the land.

All of these outcomes – provided they are correctly carried out – are beneficial. In China, for example, grain output leapt by 70 per cent in the decade after land redistribution. However, to ring-fence and insulate these beneficial outcomes from typical Kenyan venality, the land tax must be inescapable. It may be necessary to make it public information whether the tax for a piece of land has been paid or not. Further, during land redistribution the public should be involved, as was the case in Japan. In addition, the institutions in charge of these processes should be staffed by individuals who are above reproach. It is also important to note that a certain reading of Article 209 of our Constitution could conceivably prevent the national government from imposing such a land tax. Sound judicial advice should therefore be sought before proceeding with these changes.

Dear Mr President: please tax the land, and not your people.