Add your voice now, demand that African leaders ban the production, trade, and use of toxic pesticides across the continent.
Get InvolvedAfrica’s food sovereignty and public health should never be the collateral damage of global chemical dumping. For years, a silent but deadly double standard has played out across the African continent, hiding in plain sight within our agricultural value chains. Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs), chemical formulations proven to cause cancers, neurodevelopmental disorders, and severe environmental degradation are routinely manufactured in regions like the European Union, shipped to African shores, and sprayed onto our soils. This is not a matter of feeding a continent; it is a crisis of regulatory failure and a lack of corporate accountability. It is no longer just a question of “safe use” by farmers; it is a question of law, liability, and systemic reform across Africa.
The myth of safe use vs. the reality of harm
Agrochemical giants have hidden behind the defense of “safe use,” shifting the entire burden of chemical mitigation onto smallholder farmers. They argue that if a product causes harm, it is because a farmer failed to wear adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or miscalculated a buffer zone. Suffice to say, this argument is structurally flawed. In a continent dominated by small-scale farming, expecting rural smallholders to maintain complex industrial buffer zones or wear thick plastic PPE in tropical climates is a dangerous fantasy. When chemicals like Chlorpyrifos, banned in Europe for causing brain damage in children or Mancozeb, are freely sold in local shops, the system is fundamentally broken. The data tells a grim story: nearly half of all pesticides used in powerhouse agricultural economies like Kenya and South Africa are classified as HHPs. We are quite literally sacrificing our long-term public health, biodiversity, and soil vitality for short-term corporate profits.
The Legal Leverage
Weaponizing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to break this cycle, the legal framework must pivot from regulating the user to holding the producer accountable. This is where Kenya’s pioneering environmental legislation offers a revolutionary blueprint for the rest of Africa through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). Under Section 13 of Kenya’s Sustainable Waste Management Act and the operationalized Extended Producer Responsibility Regulations, the legal definition of a “producer” has drastically shifted. It now firmly encompasses manufacturers, importers, and brand owners. Crucially, Kenya’s framework does not stop at plastic bottles; it applies directly to toxic and synthetic materials.
When applied to the agrochemical sector through compliance bodies like the Hazardous Waste Producer Responsibility Organization of Kenya (HAPROK), EPR completely redefines corporate liability;
Cradle-to-Grave Accountability: Multinationals can no longer simply drop millions of litres of HHP’s into the market and walk away. They are legally liable for the entire lifecycle, including the collection, safe treatment, and disposal of highly toxic chemical containers and leftover waste.
Shifting the Financial Burden: Traditionally, the cost of pesticide-induced environmental cleanups and public health fallout has been subsidized by African taxpayers. EPR forces these external costs back onto the corporate balance sheets of the pesticide manufacturers.
The Incentive to Innovate: If a company is financially and legally responsible for the toxic legacy of its products, the economic incentive flips. Rather than pushing dangerous HHPs, corporations are forced to invest in safer, bio-based alternatives and agroecological solutions.
The courts are already being asked to act
This is not an abstract policy debate. It is already before the Environment and Land Court at Milimani, where the African Centre for Corrective and Preventive Action and I, on our own behalf and on behalf of the class of Kenyans exposed to these chemicals, have petitioned against the Agrochemicals Association of Kenya, Monsanto Kenya, Syngenta East Africa, Bayer East Africa, BASF East Africa, Twiga Chemicals, and the relevant state regulators. The petition challenges the continued distribution of paraquat, imidacloprid, clothianidin, fipronil, chlorpyrifos, thiacloprid, thiamethoxam, fenitrothion, malathion, dinotefuran, and glyphosate (a chemical that the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified as a probable human carcinogen) and that regulators in the European Union and elsewhere have restricted or banned outright.
Kenyan horticultural exports have already paid the price of this regulatory failure, kales and tomatoes from Kirinyaga and Muran’ga rejected by the European Union for exceeding maximum residue levels, avocado consignments flagged by Norwegian authorities for excessive chlorpyrifos. The same neonicotinoids driving down bee populations and contaminating honey across the country are the ones our petition asks the court to order withdrawn. We are not simply asking for declarations that rights have been violated; we are asking for a mandatory injunction compelling manufacturers to stop the sale and distribution of these products, and for compensation for the Kenyans who have borne the health cost of their unchecked use. The American case of Hardeman v. Monsanto Co., where a jury found Roundup’s glyphosate responsible for a claimant’s cancer, shows that this liability question does not stay confined to a courtroom in one country, it is a preview of the reckoning that awaits any jurisdiction still treating “safe use” as a substitute for genuine accountability.
Long after the ban, the poison remains
This is precisely why “safe use” cannot be the end of the conversation, and why a ban, on its own, cannot be the end of accountability. The petition notes that fipronil “is relatively persistent in soils and sediments, and some of its breakdown products remains environmentally significant long after application,” and that paraquat’s persistence in terrestrial and aquatic environments “raise[s] serious concerns with residues ultimately entering the food chain.” Glyphosate follows a similar trajectory, washing off farms into rivers and streams exposing aquatic ecosystems long after application. But the clearest warning sign is what has already happened with an older generation of chemicals: organochlorine pesticides such as DDT, aldrin, and endosulfan were still turning up in the soils of the Nyando River Catchment as recently as 2015, despite having been banned in Kenya in 1986, 2004, and 2017 respectively. If chemicals outlawed decades ago are still detectable in our soil today, what happens to the HHPs still being sprayed across the country right now, once they too are eventually withdrawn? A ban that stops future sales but leaves manufacturers with no obligation to remediate the soil, water, and food chains they have already contaminated is only half a victory. Extended Producer Responsibility must reach backward as well as forward, holding companies accountable not only for products still on the shelf, but for the toxic legacy of what they have already sold.
A Pan-African Imperative
Kenya’s recent regulatory momentum, including the announced withdrawal and restriction of hundreds of hazardous products shows that change is possible. However, pests, rivers, and toxic trade do not respect national borders. If Kenya bans an HHP but a neighbouring country continues to import it, porous borders will guarantee its return via illicit trade or contaminated food imports. Africa needs a harmonized, continental approach. Regional blocs like the East African Community (EAC) and the African Union must coordinate to enforce strict transboundary controls on hazardous waste, adhering strictly to the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. We must adopt a unified stance. If a chemical is deemed too toxic to protect the citizens of the country where it was manufactured, it is too toxic to be sprayed onto the food eaten by an African child.
The petitions signed by tens of thousands of citizens across the continent are not just expressions of frustration; they are a mandate for legislative action. True corporate accountability means moving past the polite corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs of agrochemical companies, where a t-shirt is handed out for returning a plastic jug and enforcing the strict, punitive realities of Extended Producer Responsibility laws. It is time to reform our pesticide registries, empower bodies like the Pest Control Products Board (PCPB), and transition our food systems toward sustainable agroecology.
Add your voice now, demand that African leaders ban the production, trade, and use of toxic pesticides across the continent.
Get InvolvedWritten by Kelvin Mugambi Kubai
Advocate of the High Court of Kenya
