It’s a dirty business – fake fertiliser and big bribes

It’s a well-worn cliché, but one that rings true: you remember where you were when a big news story breaks. Suddenly, every humdrum detail of a bus journey or a coffee break is immortalised in a flashbulb moment.

So, what’s it like when you’re the one breaking the story? Or the one at the heart of the story?

On March 10, John-Allan Namu was at home in Nairobi with his wife and children – a run-of-the-mill Sunday set-up for a young dad. Less run-of-the-mill was the story that John-Allan and his team at Africa Uncensored, the publication he founded, were about to break – a story that has continued making waves in Kenya ever since.

There was a lot of anticipation. 

Through reporting led by Cynthia Gichiri, Africa Uncensored was about to reveal that farmers across Kenya had been duped into buying a subsidised fertiliser that was nothing more than ordinary sand. 

First came a tip from a whistleblower. A carefully orchestrated undercover operation followed, with three reporters posing as workers in order to secretly film the sand being dug up and packaged. (Yep, Africa Uncensored was digging up dirt on… digging up dirt). The investigation culminated in testing samples of the so-called fertiliser in a lab.

“What we saw was shocking,” John-Allan told me. “To the naked eye, it looks incredibly criminal.” (After all, if it looks like sand, and feels like sand…) “But the test results were what made our hearts really sink.”

The results showed that the “organic fertiliser” had no significant extra nutrients – in layperson terms, it did nothing to help crops grow. Seeing the test scores, some farmers told reporters they felt their bare soil alone would make better fertiliser.

Just a few days before the story was published, senior politicians tried to quash it. But John-Allan was having none of it. The intense rigour of the reporters and stringent checks of the legal team left him in no doubt that the story was sound – and that people needed to hear it.

Hundreds or even thousands of small-scale farmers had been affected, and some had lost their crops. The rogue trader responsible for selling the fertiliser had been able to operate in this way for two years completely unchallenged, until the story broke. “To me, that just spoke to a very depraved system,” John-Allan said. But his team has taken the system to task. 

As the story gained momentum, the Kenyan parliament had to respond. Both the national assembly and the senate have started investigations. A little over a week ago, Mithika Linturi, the agriculture minister, faced an impeachment vote. He survived the move, but there has been widespread outcry – I’ll be keeping my eye on this one over the next few months, as I suspect there’s more to come.

The courts have got involved as well, charging both the proprietor of the fake fertiliser business and members of an industry trade board over the scandal. 

But for John-Allan and his team, what may stay with them the longest is the response they’ve had from farmers. Whether it’s online or as his team travels around the country, he says a lot of farmers are very thankful – especially those who saw the story in time to stop them buying the fake fertiliser.

“That’s one of the things that I think the team is really happy about,” he told me. “That journalism has had a direct impact on the decisions that people are making and those decisions have helped them avoid losses – and helped them avoid heartache.”

Sometimes when a story reveals an injustice, it’s easy to focus on the harm that’s already been done – but preventing further damage can be just as important, and a point of pride for everyone involved. There are crops growing in Kenya today that could have been smothered under sand. That’s a big win. 

For more about the fake fertiliser scandal, watch Africa Uncensored's two part documentary Fertile Deception, or keep on top of updates with its Deep Dive newsletter.

And for another win, read on to hear from another Kenyan journalist (are you spotting this week’s theme yet?) who challenged the press itself. 

It started with a text message. An employee of a Kenyan PR agency working for British American Tobacco (BAT) brazenly asked Edwin to name his price in exchange for information about what he was working on. 

“My shock was how bold they were,” said Edwin at the time. He refused the bribe. But he wasn’t done there. He decided to take the unprecedented step of going public. “There was a need to protect the dignity of this profession,” says Edwin, speaking recently from his home in Nairobi. “Millions of people rely on our work and believe in the sanctity of what we write.” 

At the time, Edwin was working with TBIJ on a story about BAT’s influencer-led marketing for e-cigarettes, and how those tactics could attract young non-smokers to its new line of products. But with this development, for the first time in his life, Edwin wasn’t reporting the story; he was the story. Alongside the investigation, TBIJ put out a second story covering the attempted bribe itself. 

Edwin remembers the day of publication as being just like any other. His wife was at work and his children had gone to school. Edwin was at home working. “I wasn’t scared,” he says, matter-of-factly. “When you’re writing the truth or the truth is being written about you, you don’t have to panic. To be honest, I was excited.” 

As far as he was aware, this was the first time a Kenyan journalist had revealed an offer of a bribe in this way. It wasn’t the norm. According to Ediwn, the general rule was take it or leave it, but don’t talk about it. Nonetheless, he tried to go about his day as usual. “I was just going through the newspapers.” 

Suddenly a flurry of alerts on Whatsapp and Twitter came through. “That’s how I knew, ‘oh something’s going on’,” he remembers. “It blew up straight away. I was getting praised abroad and being criticised by my local friends.” 

Speaking up immediately caused problems. “I was followed for weeks by a policeman attached to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission who threatened to arrest me if I did not appear before him.” But Edwin refused, suspecting foul play. “It was scary. I didn’t know how far they were willing to follow me, how they wanted to take it.” 

For a time, he felt like a “toxic journalist”. Nobody wanted to work with him. “I was the guy who will spit out your secrets.”

But given the chance to do it all over, would he do the same again? No doubt, he says. 

While some doors closed to him in Kenyan newsrooms, others abroad opened up. In the past year alone, he’s had regular investigations in the pages of The Guardian, even hitting the front page with another TBIJ story. “It’s a badge of honour for me to look at it and say, ‘if you want to ask me how my ethics go, in terms of practising journalism, I even have an article to prove it.’ 

Now, Edwin says, PR agencies know better than to even ask the question – not just to him, but to journalists more generally. “It’s a lower dignity when you're asked, ‘What's your price?’ It’s like you're a commodity. And journalists are trusted by millions of people in and out of the country. So, as long as we do not have a price, then I feel like it’s a good thing.”

To keep up to date with Edwin’s stories, follow him on X @edwincowino