Confronting the Overlap of Sextortion and Natural Resources in Kenya

Cole Baker, Research Fellow, Resource, Environment & Energy Policy Lab
cbaker@africacfsp.org

This article explores the link between sextortion, defined as corruption involving sexual exploitation, and natural resource scarcity in Kenya. Kenya has become a case study for how resource scarcity—including water scarcity and the scarcity of fish—leads to the increased prevalence of sextortion. After examining the relationship between sextortion and resource scarcity in Kenya and positing the impact of increased resource scarcity, the article examines the limitations and potential roles of civil society and the government in addressing this issue.

Introduction

Sextortion¹—a practice that sits at the intersection of sexual abuse and corruption—happens every day, around the world, and across several sectors and industries. Although it is common, and has large impacts on issues ranging from gender equity to economic development, it is rarely discussed or focused on by policy makers or civil society organizations. This is especially unfortunate given that sextortion is only projected to increase in prevalence in industries involved in the distribution of natural resources. Kenya, in particular, has become a case study for the overlap of sextortion and natural resource distribution, and the problem will only continue to grow in the country unless the public sector and civil society begin implementing policy and programs to mitigate the trend now.

Understanding Sextortion in Kenya

Sextortion was first coined² by the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ) in 2008 to define corruption involving sexual exploitation. In practice, sextortion is when an authority figure demands or accepts sexual favors as a precondition for performing their duties, with the victims of the act generally being women and other vulnerable people. A fundamental aspect to sextortion is the corruption component. Within sextortion, the sexual act itself is the bribe. For an authority figure to be bribed, they must first have a good that the people need. In an academic setting that good could be a grade, and in a legal setting the good could be a lack of prosecution. In the industries surrounding natural resources, however, the goods—water, electricity, food—generally meet more essential needs.

Individuals who control the provision of goods to meet essential needs have immense power. The only times this is not true is when the goods are widely available. While many in developed nations assume the more common natural resources fall in this category, conflict³ and corruption⁴ have surrounded these resources throughout human history.

Having experienced issues surrounding water scarcity and resource use for decades, Kenya is an illuminating example of the impact of resource scarcity. The climate in Kenya is arid for much of the year and the four major water basins⁵ in the country have dramatically different levels of renewable supply, meaning that there is not an equitable supply of water access across regions. There is also a significant contras⁶ in the development of infrastructure from region to region, with many rural areas suffering from a lack of delivery methods or sanitation.

This lack of access leaves Kenyan women, who are traditionally responsible for collecting water, vulnerable to sextortion from the utility workers in control of the pumps or kiosks. While there is shame and social stigma linked to this offense, it is generally borne by the victim⁷ rather than the abuser. This lack of informal backlash to this abuse, combined with a lack of formal deterrents, fosters an environment in which sextortion can thrive.

In times of economic downturns or natural disasters, the risk of sextortion for water increases⁸. In this context, the women’s need for water remains the same, but either the supply of water or the ability of women to purchase water is decreased. As such, the leverage the vendors or utilities workers have to demand additional or alternative recompense in the form of sexual favors grows in times of hardship.

Water is not the only resource in Kenya subject to sextortion. Along the shores of Lake Victoria, the practice of “sex for fish,”⁹ called jaboya by the locals, has received significant international attention in recent years. In these fishing industries, professions are separated by gender, with men catching the fish and women selling them at the market. Since the 1970s, the supply of fish in Lake Victoria has been dwindling. This decrease in supply meant that women were attempting to buy more fish than the fishermen had to sell. Thus began the practice of “sex for fish,” where fishermen demanded the extra incentive of sex for supplying the women with fish they needed. Due to the powerlessness of the women to control the supply of the fish they depended on and a lack of economic alternatives, jaboya became a common practice.

It is important to recognize that the impact of sextortion is not only felt by the women suffering the sexual abuse. In the specific examples of water alone, cases of sextortion and other types of corruption contribute to the spread of disease by reducing the quality and availability of water, which creates fundamental sanitation and health issues. This lack of access, termed as water poverty, is also more broadly detrimental to human survival, as the importance of water extends to agriculture, infrastructure, and other industries beyond health.

Sextortion is also a major contributor to HIV and AIDS. The fishermen who engage in the practice of jaboya travel widely and may or may not know their HIV status. This, combined with the cultural understanding of HIV as only being contracted by those who have done wrong to others, contributes to the counties around Lake Victoria having some of the highest rates of HIV in Kenya. It is projected that the rates of HIV in these fishing villages is between 25% and 40%, dependent on gender.¹⁰

The overlap of natural resource scarcity and sextortion in Kenya is only projected to become more common. Due to a variety of factors—including climate change—natural resources are becoming increasingly difficult to access. Kenya suffers from droughts, natural disasters, locusts, and disease. All of these issues result in increased economic hardship and decreased access to natural resources. There is also a history of conflict over natural resources between the various communities in Kenya.¹¹. As past conflict is one of the most cited predictors for future conflict,¹² increasing resource scarcity could be the spark that reignites these disputes. If conflict were to erupt again, it would almost certainly lead to less natural resource access and more scarcity, as individual mobility—specifically the mobility of women¹³—is restricted and natural resources of opposing communities are targeted. Additionally, while the impact of conflict on sextortion is primarily as a threat multiplier, it can also directly increase instances of rape and the sexual abuse of vulnerable peoples.¹⁴

Because of these existing and potential problems—combined with the already established pattern of resource scarcity leading to sextortion in Kenya—there is a high probability that the number of sextortion cases in Kenya will continue to rise. As the practice becomes more prevalent, the accompanying problems will undoubtedly spread and further degrade stability in Kenya, which could potentially lead to more resource scarcity. Given the current and historical trends, intervention is required to interrupt this vicious cycle.

The Role of Civil Society

Civil society plays a significant role in efforts to change cultural perceptions and empower vulnerable people through targeted funding, programmatic expertise, and the engagement of local stakeholders. Examples of effective civil society intervention range from advocating for practical changes in private sector facilities responsible for dispersing natural resources—including additional lighting around water distribution facilities and technical changes that remove the need for home visits—to helping organize and fund programs that empower women to control the distribution of resources.

In the famous “fish for sex” example, civil society enabled the women from the fishing villages to create a program called “No Sex For Fish.”¹⁵ Under this program, the women applied for and received grants from USAID, and later the charity World Connect, to buy their own boats. They then hired men to fish for them. This program was revolutionary, both changing the cultural stigma associated with women owning or working on boats and in changing the practical power structure of the local fishing industry. With the women in control of the means of production—the fishing boats—the fishermen no longer had the ability to leverage their “authority” in return for sex. These benefits extended beyond the women who owned boats as part of the program, as other women were able to avoid the additional cost of jaboya by buying directly from these women boat owners. As these new boats created additional employment opportunities for the fishermen, the program also helped address the cultural opposition by the local men to women owning fishing boats.

Yet, this program, like all civil society interventions, has its limits. Not all of the local men support the “No Sex For Fish” program, as they fear additional fishing boats will decrease their own catch. Many of the fishermen who are not involved in the program still engage in the practice of jaboya and are likely to do so until they lack the necessary leverage. In the context of the “No Sex For Fish” program alone, removing this leverage would require massively scaling up the program and increasing the number of women involved. Unfortunately, the program is already having sustainability problems in its current form. The women lack the resources necessary to repair the boats when they are damaged, which limits the program’s efficacy and longevity.

While incremental damage to the boats has been an issue for the duration of the program, massive flooding along the lake in 2019 and 2020 sharply exacerbated the problem.¹⁶ These floods destroyed homes and boats, and were accompanied by the growth of invasive water hyacinth weeds, which have limited the ability of fishermen to access fish breeding sites. The program can only survive through additional funding, but without any indication of self-sustainability it seems unlikely.

The “No Sex For Fish” program and civil society interventions like it are necessary steps to addressing sextortion in Kenya. Without working in local communities to change the power structure and accompanying cultural attitudes, there is no hope for a solution. As exemplified by the “No Sex For Fish” program, however, these interventions alone face insurmountable odds.

The Role of Government

Given that civil society has a pivotal yet constrained role to play in ending sextortion in Kenya, the country’s policy makers must be an active part of the solution.¹⁷ The first step is for the Kenyan government to officially recognize and define sextortion, and incorporate this new understanding into already existing policy. In addition, Kenyan policy makers should begin actively collecting data specific to sextortion. While this data can be collected as part of broader investigations on corruption, there must be a point when the data specific to sextortion is analyzed in the context of sextortion rather than corruption more broadly. Sextortion is distinct from other forms of corruption, with the potential for a divergence in incentives, implementation, and actors. Only by examining the data points in isolation can policy makers use the resulting analysis to craft effective legislation.

The next step in government intervention would be to create legislation specific to sextortion. Kenya currently prosecutes sextortion under three laws: the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act, the Sexual Offences Act, and the Employment Act of 2007.¹⁸ While a broad interpretation of these pieces of legislation allows for the prosecution of some sextortion cases, these laws were not intended to address the crime of sextortion. As such, it is exceedingly difficult to prove the criminal aspect of sextortion under these standards.

Of these three laws, the majority of sextortion cases are currently prosecuted under the Sexual Offences Act. The prosecution of offenses pertaining to rape and defilement under this law often require proof of physical coercion. As the coercion aspect of sextortion is not inherently physical, this proof is difficult—if not impossible—to conclusively provide. When utility workers demand sex before providing water to the women collecting it, they are not physically forcing themselves onto the women but instead leveraging the women’s need for water to coerce them into sex. Under the standards of the Sexual Offences Act, the utility worker would be able to use this distinction in court to claim the consent of the victim, and the case would be thrown out.

In order to effectively prosecute sextortion cases, Kenyan policy makers must first craft legislation that effectively criminalizes the practice. If crafted from the perspective of anti-corruption law, such legislation should explicitly include sexual acts as a form of currency for bribery. However, the law should also prevent retaliation by prohibiting the prosecution of victims as bribe givers and recognizing their victim status in the interaction. If the legislation is instead crafted from the perspective of combatting sexual abuse, the mandate of the act should be broad enough to effectively apply to a sextortion case in any context—unlike the Employment Act which is limited to the context of the workplace. Additionally, such legislation must recognize all forms of coercion and explicitly define the preconditions of consent to include a lack of coercion, physical or otherwise.

The explicit criminalization of sextortion is a necessary step, but to maximize its impact, Kenya’s legal system must also actively seek to prosecute those who engage in the criminal act. For this prosecution to take place, victims first have to report the crime. To incentivize this, the Kenyan government can provide support services, including health, financial, and legal support.¹⁹

While data collection, the creation of legislation, and victim support services would undoubtedly help combat sextortion in Kenya, there are obstacles that policy alone cannot surmount. As mentioned earlier, sextortion victims in Kenya face significant social stigma: a key factor that government policy does not exhaustively address. Fortunately, civil society solutions are capable of addressing such cultural taboos. With this in mind, the government should prioritize the creation of partnerships with civil society with the specific intent of combatting sextortion, thereby amplifying their individual efforts.

Conclusion

Sextortion is an already established practice in Kenya, with few existing deterrents. If the country experiences increased resource scarcity, sextortion will dramatically increase in the natural resource industry, followed by a host of already-identified, and as yet unforeseen, problems. Kenyan policy makers and civil society leaders need to work both separately and in partnership if the country is to effectively interrupt this progression and combat sextortion. However, if Kenya can implement these practices and interrupt the cycle, it will serve as an example to the rest of the region and the world on how to prevent and combat sextortion.

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