Palm wine or Pombe la Mnazi as it is locally known in Swahili is perhaps one of the most common traditional and legally recognised liquor at the Kenyan Coast.
However, there has been a lot of outcry concerning police harassing the dealers of this ‘special product.’
Coast, Kaloleni MP Gunga Mwinga asked Deputy President William Ruto to intervene so that police officers can stop harassing mnazi buyers and sellers.
“Police have hatched a plot to harass Kaloleni, Rabai and Kilifi South residents running mnazi business. There is no way the security officers will classify mnazi as an illicit brew. It is natural liquor that has had no side effects,” he said.
The debate about whether mnazi should be classified as either legal or illegal liquor has been in the public domain since early 2000, when the then Kisauni MP the late Maitha Karisa lobbied for its legalisation.
Palm trees were introduced into the Kenyan Coast by the Portuguese in the 15th
century, and since then the locals have been tapping its wine for local consumption while its tree trunks and leaves are used for thatching the Swahili makuti houses.
The coconut industry is the second biggest economy drivers at the Coastal agricultural sector after the cashew nuts industry.
In 2007, the Kenya Coconut Development Authority (KCDA) was established to exploit the potential of the coconut industry which had remained largely unexploited.
KCDA has been on the forefront regulating the sale of mnazi and has since come up with strategies to harness the potential of palm wine and other coconut products.
Last year the government through the ministry pledged Sh500 million to help harness the potential of the coconut industry in Kenya.
Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries cabinet secretary Felix Koskei said the money has been increased up from the Sh80 million the industry was getting from the National Treasury.
Koskei said that the government had realised the need to revamp the industry which has a potential of contributing Sh25 billion every year to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
“Currently the coconut industry contributes Sh6.4 billion of the Kenya's GDP up from the Sh3.2 in the previous years,” he said.
The cabinet secretary said the Asian and Pacific coconut growing countries have grown their economies through the coconut industry, where Philippines is the leading coconut producer with over 360 million trees.
Kenya is second in East Africa region with 7.4 million trees while Tanzania leads the way with 25 million trees which have helped improve the livelihoods of the natives.
Experts from the sector have noted that Kenya has the potential to generate more than US$294 million from the coconut sub-sector with the widening of local and international markets.
Europe, the United States and the large East African Community (EAC) have huge expert markets but even with this huge potential only 200,000 hectares are under coconut farming with more than 99 percent of the crop being grown along the coast.
“Concerted effort is thus required by all relevant stakeholders, national government, county governments and KCDA in making good use of the coconut industry for poverty eradication, income generation and wealth creation for the country,” he said.
Jeremiah Alukwe, the Business Development and Quality Assurance manager at KCDA says unless coconut industry is well regulated, the benefits that may otherwise be realised from the sub-sector would be an elusive goal to achieve.
“KCDA has endeavored to put in place a framework that has been used to regulate mnazi selling. Under the framework, the Authority first issued licenses to mnazi selling dealers at the beginning of 2010,” he says.
Alukwe says the Authority has been in the forefront of propagating sanity and respected businesses along the mnazi product line.
“For instance the Authority in conjunction with Kenya Bureau of Standard has developed a standard for mnazi drink particularly in as far as hygiene and packaging issues are concerned,” he says.