Lake Victoria basin
More actions
| Lake Victoria basin | |
|---|---|
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | -1.51, 34.41 |
| Country | Kenya,Tanzania |
| Provinces/States | Homa Bay,Migori,Kisii,Mara Region |
| Area | 30,300 km² |
| Growing history | |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
The Lake Victoria basin growing region lies east of Lake Victoria, on both sides of the border between Kenya and Tanzania. It is drawn on the Kenyan counties of Homa Bay, Migori and Kisii and on Mara Region in Tanzania. A review by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its Bulletin on Narcotics for 2006, reported fairly large-scale cannabis cultivation in the Kenyan part of the basin.[1]: 75 A United Nations study of 1999 had named the Gwassi Hills and the districts of Kuria, Migori, Homa Bay and Kisii among the sources of good-quality bhang, as cannabis is called in Kenya.[2]: 21 Across the border, Tanzania's Drug Control and Enforcement Authority (DCEA) destroyed cannabis farms in Tarime District and the districts next to it in 2023, 2024 and 2026, and in 2024 more acres of farms were destroyed in Mara Region than in any other region of the country.[3][4]: 23[5] In 2019 the Kenyan police told The Standard that the farms just over the border were the main source of the cannabis brought into Kenya.[6]
Geography
The Gwassi Hills, in Homa Bay County, are a group of 24 hills near the lake, which The Nairobian described in 2024 as so hard to climb that outsiders kept away.[7] In Mara Region the DCEA's operation of 2024 was aimed at farms in the Masinki valley and the valley of the Mara River.[8] An official of the Lake Victoria Basin Water Board for the Mara catchment said in 2024 that he had seen cannabis grown in the Mara River valley, and an agricultural officer that many farmers relied on the river's water to grow it.[8] The DCEA's commissioner general, Aretas Lyimo, warned in 2023 that the farming could damage the river basin and the Serengeti National Park.[3]
Some of the farms lie close to the border. In 2019 two reporters from The Standard of Nairobi crossed into Tanzania from Manyera village, in Kenya's Suna West sub-county, by an unofficial route through a swampy thicket. Some 500 metres inside Tanzania, at Luanda village, they found bhang farms stretching to the horizon, and a second grower in Ikoma village, about a kilometre away. The area, they wrote, was reputed to be the leading bhang-growing area of Tanzania.[6]
Cultivation history
Before 2000
The historian Iddy Ramadhani Magoti writes that a United Nations summary of the government's reports for 1945 listed Musoma and Tarime, both now in Mara Region, among the places in Tanganyika where cannabis was grown.[9]: 118
The study of 1999, The Drug Nexus in Africa, by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, said that cannabis growing had a long tradition in western Kenya. In recent years, it said, the crop had changed from a minor one, grown for a small local market, into a commercial crop grown for profit on a large scale. Among the places said to produce bhang of good quality, high in THC, it listed the remote Gwassi Hills and the Kuria, Migori, Homa Bay and Kisii districts of Nyanza Province, besides three districts of Western Province. Some of the bhang sold in those areas, the study added, was grown in Uganda.[2]: 21
Kenya since 2000
The UNODC review of 2006 named the Lake Victoria basin with the central highlands round Mount Kenya and the coast as Kenya's areas of fairly large-scale cultivation. It gave an estimate of as much as 1,500 hectares for the three, some of it in the lower farmlands, hidden among traditional crops.[1]: 75 In 2024 the Nation wrote that bhang farming had long been linked with places such as the shores of Lake Victoria and the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya.[10] A report of the National Crime Research Centre, published in 2024, lists Homa Bay and Kisii among the counties where cultivation had been reported.[11]: 19
In May 2024 forest rangers and officials planting trees in Gwassi Forest found a clearing where tens of acres of trees had been cut down and bhang planted instead. They uprooted the plants from 30 acres.[10] By 27 May operations in the hills had found more than 40 acres,[12] and in June the Homa Bay county commissioner put the area destroyed at more than 50 acres, grown for sale in the county and elsewhere in Kenya.[7]
Tanzania since 2000
According to the UNODC review of 2006, cannabis was grown in ten of the twenty regions of mainland Tanzania, especially those on its borders. Along the Kenyan border, it said, Kenyans advanced money to local farmers to grow it.[1]: 74 The Nation reported in 2015 that a team of Kenyan officials had visited the "green farms" of Tarime District two years before, where cannabis was grown on a large scale.[13] The Kenyan administrators said that earlier attempts to have the crop uprooted had failed for lack of help from the Tanzanian authorities; Julius Mutula, a former district commissioner of Migori, recalled being told that Tanzanians grew it because Kenya was a ready market.[13] One of the growers the Standard reporters met in 2019 said that Kenya was his main market, and growers at Ikoma said they had taken up cannabis after their tobacco found no buyers.[6]
The DCEA named Mara among the regions that led the country in cultivation in 2017.[14]: 22 In October 2023 a week-long operation in Tarime and Rorya destroyed 807 hectares of farms, and Lyimo said that the people there had made the basin of the Mara River a special area for growing cannabis.[3] A three-week operation in Tarime and Serengeti districts in 2024 destroyed 3,007.5 acres.[15] Lyimo said that the farming in Mara Region was paid for by people from neighbouring countries, who gave farmers in Tarime the capital and took the crop away for sale once it was harvested.[8] The DCEA's report for 2024 gives 3,045 acres of farms destroyed in Mara Region, out of 4,733 in the whole country.[4]: 22–23 In July 2026, after operations in Tarime and Rorya districts that destroyed 291.2 acres, Lyimo said that cannabis farming in the region had fallen by about 80 per cent.[5]
Trade
The Standard reported in 2019 that, according to the Kenyan police, the farms over the border were the main source of the cannabis brought into Kenya; the paper wrote that the drug was believed to be smuggled along the highway from Isebania through Migori to Nairobi almost every day. The Migori county police commander told it that the smuggling was hard to stop with too few officers to guard the border and without the cooperation of the Tanzanian police.[6] In 2015 the police estimated that at least two vehicles loaded with bhang passed through the Migori area every day; the sacks were usually packed in Suna West, Suna East, Nyatike, Kuria West and Kuria East sub-counties to be collected.[13] The National Crime Research Centre traced the routes from Tanzania through Migori, either by road or from Muhuru Bay on the lake, on to Kisii, Kisumu, Nakuru, Nairobi and Mombasa. In Kenya cannabis from Tanzania is called bongo.[11]: 27, 30
Growing Areas
| Growing Area | Status | Country | County or region |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gwassi Hills | Active | Kenya | Homa Bay |
| Tarime | Active | Tanzania | Mara Region |
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Collected | Locality | Area |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EAG-KEN-MIG-0120200001 | Migori Sativa 2020 | Migori | ||
| EAG-KEN-MIG-0120200002 | Isibania Sativa 2020 | Isibania |
The two accessions are seed of lines that the seller East Africa Genes named after Migori and the border town of Isibania; it calls them landrace sativas.[16]
Recent news
No news items are recorded for this growing region yet.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2006). "Review of the world cannabis situation" (PDF). Bulletin on Narcotics. LVIII (1 and 2). New York: United Nations (published 2008).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (March 1999). The Drug Nexus in Africa (PDF) (Report). ODCCP Studies on Drugs and Crime, Monograph series 1. Vienna: United Nations.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Takwa, Esther (10 October 2023). "Operation destroys 807 hectares, seizes 507 sacks of marijuana". Daily News. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Mamlaka ya Kudhibiti na Kupambana na Dawa za Kulevya (June 2025). Taarifa ya Hali ya Dawa za Kulevya ya Mwaka 2024 (PDF) (Report) (in Kiswahili). Dar es Salaam: DCEA. ISBN 978-9912-9896-5-8.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Kilimo cha bangi Mkoa wa Mara Chapungua kwa Asilimia 80 Kufuatia operesheni Endelevu za Serikali". Mamlaka ya Kudhibiti na Kupambana na Dawa za Kulevya (in Kiswahili). 28 July 2026. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Omollo, Kevine (26 May 2019). "Shock of vast bhang farms feeding Kenya". The Standard. Nairobi. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Omoro, James (6 June 2024). "Anger as officers raid Gwassi Hills, destroy 50 acres of weed". The Nairobian. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Said, Mariam (9 October 2024). "Tonnes of cannabis seized, farms destroyed". Daily News. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ Magoti, Iddy Ramadhani (2023). "Exploring the value of cannabis and changing mindset for advancing socio-economic development in Tanzania, 1891–2023". Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences. 12 (2).
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Odiwuor, George (26 May 2024). "Alarm over rise of illegal weed farms in protected forests". Nation. Retrieved 12 October 2026.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Opondo, Vincent Odhiambo (2024). Mapping Cannabis Trafficking in Kenya (PDF) (Report). Nairobi: National Crime Research Centre. ISBN 978-9914-9844-2-2. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ Abich, Aly (27 May 2024). "Over 40 acres of bhang uprooted, destroyed by police in Homa Bay". Citizen Digital. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Otieno, Elisha (14 March 2015). "Gateway of bhang from Tanzania's green farms". Nation. Nairobi. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Mamlaka ya Kudhibiti na Kupambana na Dawa za Kulevya. Taarifa ya Hali ya Dawa za Kulevya ya Mwaka 2017 (PDF) (Report) (in Kiswahili). Dar es Salaam: DCEA.
- ↑ Prosper, Joseph (10 October 2024). "Anti-drug enforcers arrest 17, burn 3,000 acres of cannabis". The Guardian. Dar es Salaam. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ "Pure African Strains". East Africa Genes. Archived from the original on 7 August 2020. Retrieved 8 October 2026.