Kenya Moves to Legalise Chang’aa with New Safety Standards from KEBS
The traditional Kenyan spirit known as chang’aa may soon be sold legally across the country. The Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) is currently drafting clear rules to govern its production, packaging, and sale.
This development was shared with the National Assembly’s Public Petitions Committee on Tuesday. The goal is to bring the popular but previously banned drink out of the shadows and into a properly supervised system that protects public health.
For many years, chang’aa has been produced and sold illegally, often leading to serious health risks. Unregulated versions have sometimes contained harmful substances like methanol, which have caused deaths and illnesses in different parts of Kenya. By creating official standards, KEBS aims to ensure the drink is made safely, with proper ingredients and clear labelling. This move represents a shift in policy from simply banning the spirit to managing it carefully so that consumers can access a safer product while reducing the dangers linked to the underground trade.
The new framework will include strict guidelines on how chang’aa is brewed and packaged. Officials from KEBS, working alongside the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) and the Interior Ministry, also plan to introduce a digital tracking system. This system will monitor ethanol from the point of production or import all the way to its final use, helping to prevent it from being diverted into unsafe brewing. KEBS Quality Assurance officer John Kabue explained that the approach seeks to bring traditional alcoholic products under a controlled safety framework rather than keeping them completely outside regulation.
Illicit alcohol currently makes up a large portion of consumption in Kenya, with estimates suggesting it accounts for around 60 percent of total alcohol use. This underground market is valued at approximately 204 billion shillings and results in significant tax losses for the government, exceeding 71 billion shillings each year. Supporters of the new rules believe that legalising chang’aa under proper standards could help reduce these issues, improve safety, and allow better oversight of the entire sector. At the same time, the Interior Ministry has recommended stronger penalties for those who continue to handle illicit brews, arguing that current fines are too low to serve as an effective deterrent.
This latest step builds on long-standing discussions about how best to handle traditional brews in Kenya. If successfully implemented, the standards could create a safer environment for both producers and drinkers while bringing part of the informal economy into the formal system. The process is still underway, but many are watching closely to see how these safety rules will be applied in practice and what impact they will have on communities that have relied on chang’aa for generations.
