There’s a health crisis quietly growing along the Kenya–Tanzania border and it’s about time we started treating it with the urgency it deserves. Wild meat is being hunted, traded and eaten in many border areas, while it has in many sense become a matter of food or culture, the truth is much scarier: Wild meat can transmit serious diseases from animals to humans.
The strange part is that Kenya and Tanzania are neighbours, sharing the same wildlife and environment but not the same rules. Kenya doesn’t allow hunting or eating of wild animals, while Tanzania allows it under strict regulations. This mismatch makes it easy for illegal traders to sneak in wild meat across the border into Kenya. That puts everyone’s health at risk.
Still, let’s not blame the people doing this out of hopelessness. Many families living near the border are struggling to eke out a living. They don’t want to hunt meat because they want to – but they don’t have options. Most say they willingly go for the bush meat instead of easier alternatives like chicken or beans. That tells you this is not just a moral issue, it’s about food access and survival. Where is the EAC then?
The regional community has the power to bring countries together and to create a shared plan that protects both people and animals. They should be leading the way, creating joint health campaigns, harmonising laws and starting food programmes that help people avoid risky food like wild meat.
Sadly, the EAC has remained silent on this growing crisis – a silence that speaks volumes and carries dangerous consequences. If regional leaders don’t continue to look the other way, we’ll be repeating the mistakes of the past. The last thing anyone needs right now is that ignoring health or warnings like we saw in recent deadly outbreaks should be ignored again.
Without urgent, coordinated action from the EAC on this topic, we are not just neglecting public health, but endangering lives as well.
This isn’t just about a set of fancy law enforcement efforts. It’s about survival. If the EAC is serious about regional integration, it must be serious about health. We need to treat the wild meat crisis as a shared threat and a national problem – before it’s too late.
“Kenya doesn’t allow any hunting or eating of wild animals, while Tanzania allows it under strict regulations.”
Isaac Mwangi writes on social, political and economic issues in East Africa. E-mail: isaacmwangig@gmail.com
