UK To Pay A Measly Ksh22K To BATUK’s Fire Victims In Laikipia
The UK government has agreed to compensate thousands of Kenyans who were affected by a fire started by a British military training exercise four years ago.
The out-of-court settlement comes after a lengthy legal struggle in which 7,723 claimants claimed they lost property and experienced health difficulties as a result of the 2021 fire in Kenya’s Lolldaiga reserve in the Rift Valley.
A representative for the British High Commission in Nairobi said the fire was “extremely regrettable” and that the UK had committed “considerable time, effort, and resource” to resolving the claims.
The British government has not acknowledged the amount paid out, but the lawyer in the case told the BBC it was £2.9 million.
22K per family is diabolical. https://t.co/NQzpcTco0L
— Auntie E (@1nelima) August 22, 2025
Despite objections from his customers that the monies they received were far too tiny to compensate for their losses, Kevin Kubai hailed it the “best possible outcome”.
He stated that the alternative “would have been to continue litigation for another period of nearly seven years in order to prove these cases on a case-by-case basis,” which would have been difficult because much of the material had been lost after four years.
Mr Kubai admitted that his clients did not have medical records to back up their allegations of health impairment caused by smoke inhalation from the Lolldaiga fire.
Additionally, they were exposed to smoke since they cooked with firewood.
In 2021, a fire sparked by British troops in Lolldaiga Conservancy, Kenya, burned 10,000+ acres, destroyed homes, and left locals with health problems and polluted land. Some lost family members.
— Power Shift Africa (@PowerShftAfrica) August 23, 2025
After a long fight, victims are being paid, but the deal is a painful injustice.… pic.twitter.com/d4u94pMeXu
The UK Ministry of Defence stated in 2022 that the fire was most likely sparked by a camp stove that was knocked over during a training exercise in the conservancy.
The study concluded that around 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) of private land were damaged, but no community land was directly affected.
The civil case claimed that the smoke caused environmental damage in adjacent areas, as well as property damage due to stampeding wild animals.
The British government has assisted the conservancy with the rehabilitation of the burned land, and military drills continue to take place there.
The Lolldaiga conservancy, which covers around 49,000 acres of mountainous bushland with the ice-capped Mount Kenya as a backdrop, is located on the Laikipia plateau.
There are hundreds of thousands of acres that were seized by the British during the colonial era, leading to land disputes that continue to this day.
It is around 70 kilometres (45 miles) from the Lewa Conservancy, where the Prince of Wales proposed to Kate Middleton in November 2010.
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A few kilometers to the south is the newly renovated Nyati Barracks, a £70 million facility operated by the British Army Training Unit Kenya (Batuk).
Every year, thousands of British troops conduct huge exercises in sites such as Lolldaiga, which provides great conditions for severe environment training.
EXCLUSIVE: Kenyan women accuse British Army Training Unit (BATUK) soldiers of decades of rape, sexual violence and/or abandoning their children without consequences. They say they received no support from the UK & Kenyan governments.
— Larry Madowo (@LarryMadowo) June 17, 2024
"We call it British boys behaving badly" pic.twitter.com/CvI19bzpVH
Batuk contributes tens of millions of pounds to the Kenyan economy each year.
However, over the years, media attention has focused on reports of fatal hit-and-runs, murder, and sexual exploitation of Kenyan women by some soldiers.
UK To Pay A Measly Ksh22K To BATUK’s Fire Victims In Laikipia
