Kenya: Nairobi County Alarmed as Underage People Access Liquor Via Online Outlets
By Jemimah Mueni
July 24, 2018
Nairobi — The Nairobi City County Alcoholic Drinks Control and Licensing Board (NCCADCL) has raised concern over the ease with which underage people, are accessing liquor through online outlets.
The Board is now calling for amendment of the Nairobi City County Alcoholic Drinks Act of 2014 to regulate online liquor sales, saying the lacuna in the law is posing a big challenge in curbing underage drinking and sale of counterfeit products.
Board chairman Kennedy Odhiambo noted authenticating liquor products sold online has also been a challenge since the Act does not give provisions on how to deal with such.
“It has emerged that some secondary students are ordering drinks online during school trips,” he said.
Statistics indicate that sales of beer, liquor and wine grew 32.7 per cent in 2017.
There are about 546,000 online channels through which anyone can order alcohol in Nairobi with some promising delivery within less than 30 minutes.
The Board says further research should determine the proportion of minors who buy alcohol online and test purchases from more vendors to inform enforcement of existing policies and creation of new policies to reduce youths access to alcohol online.
Sub-standard goods are still finding their way into the Kenyan market even as the government intensifies the fight against counterfeits.
The Nairobi City County Alcoholic Drinks Act largely borrows from the Alcoholic Drinks Control Act of 2010, popularly known as the Mututho law, which centrally concentrated on reducing drinking hours in conventional outlets such as bars and pubs but ignored the online segmen