Sweet secrets: sugar smuggling and state formation in the Kenya–Somalia borderlands

This Working Paper presents a case study of sugar smuggling along the trade corridor between Kismayu in Somalia and Nairobi in Kenya. The trading and smuggling of sugar in the Kenya–Somalia borderlands is a dangerous, lucrative, and highly political business. The paper explores the involvement of militants, Kenyan defence forces, bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, and truck drivers to highlight the multiplicity of vested interests in the sugar trade. Sugar smuggling in northern Kenya is informed by decades of political marginalisation of the northern territories by the Kenyan central government. Corruption and structural neglect of domestic sugar production in western Kenya is also influenced by struggles over political power in Nairobi. By analysing the cross-border sugar trade this paper draws our attention to the relation between illicit trade and current state formation dynamics in northern Kenya.