When hundreds of residents in Sakwa, Bondo Sub-County, stormed what was supposed to be a government public participation forum this week, they were not protesting a rumour. They were rejecting a decision that had already been made for them, without them.

Their banners said two words: We Reject. One resident’s voice cut through the noise: “We have rejected the plan to have a nuclear plant in Siaya. We don’t want it.” 

Greenpeace Africa stands with them.

A pattern of announcements, not conversations

Siaya was not the government’s first choice. The plant was initially planned for Kilifi County, until residents there also rejected it, forcing the government to shift the site. What the government did not do was ask the people of Siaya whether they wanted it either.

Most residents found out the way Steven Omamo did. Omamo, a resident of Utonga village in West Sakwa, did not hear about plans for a nuclear power plant on his doorstep through a public consultation. He heard about it through a government announcement. He is now one of the principal voices behind a growing movement calling for the project to be halted.

This is what passes for public participation in Kenya’s nuclear programme: communities receive press releases, are then invited to forums where decisions are defended rather than debated. Sakwa this week showed what a genuine, united community voice looks like.

Kenya’s own scientists said no. The government pressed on.

What makes the situation in Siaya especially alarming is not only the absence of meaningful consent. It is that NuPEA’s own 2023 Strategic Environmental and Social Assessment had explicitly ruled out the Lake Victoria region, including Siaya, on geological grounds. The East African Rift System, the assessment found, made the ground too unstable, with active volcanic hazards and the risk of lake tsunamis.

The agency’s own scientists said no. The project moved to Siaya regardless.

In a March 2026 interview, a senior NuPEA engineer admitted the re-prioritisation was driven in part by “the political side of it,” the fact that there was stronger political support in Siaya than in Kilifi. That is not how you choose the site for a nuclear power plant. That is how you create a crisis.

Lake Victoria is not a cooling tank

The proposed site sits on the shores of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest freshwater lake and a lifeline for populations across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt. Nuclear plants require enormous volumes of water for cooling, discharging warm water back into the source. Lake Victoria is already under severe ecological stress. Its fish stocks support more than 200,000 fishing families. Thermal pollution and the risk of radioactive contamination in a closed freshwater system are not abstract concerns. They are existential threats to communities whose livelihoods, food security, and drinking water depend on that lake.

Kenya does not need to imagine what this looks like. It is already happening. In Migori County, just south of the proposed nuclear site, artisanal gold mining has been leaching mercury and toxic chemicals into streams and rivers that drain directly into Lake Victoria for years. Studies show that up to 90% of the mercury used in gold panning in Migori is lost to the environment, washing into waterways and accumulating in fish tissues. A 2026 study found that water from mining pits in the region contains concentrations of arsenic, chromium, and mercury up to 100 times higher than local surface waters, with contamination already stretching across a belt that includes Siaya, Busia, and Kisumu. This is the consequence of artisanal mining. The government now wants to introduce a nuclear plant to the same ecosystem.

Contamination does not stop at the Kenyan border. The lake feeds the White Nile. None of the downstream nations were consulted. None have given consent. This is not just a domestic decision. It is a regional one, made unilaterally.

Kenya has better options

Kenya already generates close to 90% of its electricity from clean, renewable sources, and holds an estimated 33,000 megawatts of untapped renewable potential. The argument that nuclear power is urgently needed to keep the lights on is not supported by the country’s own energy data.

Nuclear power, by contrast, is the most expensive electricity source currently being built anywhere in the world, with cost overruns that average over 100% globally. Kenya would be building its first-ever plant, with no nuclear workforce, no domestic supply chain, and no institutional experience, on geologically unstable ground, beside a lake shared by six nations.

This is not a calculated risk. It is an avoidable one.

Greenpeace Africa calls on the Kenyan government to:

  • Halt the current process and conduct a genuine, independently verified environmental and social assessment consistent with IAEA standards.
  • Ensure meaningful community consent, not notification after a decision has been made, but substantive participation before any site is confirmed.
  • Consult neighbouring nations whose populations share Lake Victoria’s waters and who would bear the consequences of any contamination.
  • Redirect investment toward renewables. Kenya has the potential to lead Africa’s clean energy future. That future does not require nuclear power.

The people of Sakwa did not take to the streets because they were uninformed. They took to the streets because they understood exactly what was being proposed, and they said no.

Kenya’s government must listen.

Sherie Gakii, Communications and Story Manager