A row has erupted over the alleged illegal exportation of enzymes from Lake Bogoria in Baringo County by a foreign university, with residents bordering the lake now claiming that they were not involved.

The members of the minority Endorois community have claimed that companies that conducted research did not involve locals.

“We learnt then through the media that multinational companies have made millions of dollars through genetic resources extracted from Lake Bogoria. This has really disappointed the community,” Wilson Kipkazi, an Endorois leader, told People Daily in an interview.

He said that foreigners made a killing from the lake while the locals continue to sink into poverty each day.

In 1992, a researcher from a British university harvested some microorganisms illegally from the lake and, in 1995, sold them to companies in the Netherlands and the United States.

Those companies were later sued by the Kenyan government for not sharing the financial benefits of their subsequent innovations with Kenya.

In 2004, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) went to court seeking a share of the hundreds of millions of dollars generated from the sale of the popular detergent and bleaching agent manufactured in the US, whose active ingredients were acquired from the lake illegally.

This prompted then KWS Director Dr Julius Kipng’etich to form a Task Force to look into the issue after it emerged that British companies manufacturing enzymes in UK was generating over Sh800 billion which were not ploughed back to the country. The Endorois community has complained that the alleged bio-theft had been going on at the lake famous for geysers and hot springs since 1970s.

They complain that some unscrupulous officers at the lake were colluding with foreigners to transfer the enzymes. The community has since threatened to seek court redress over the issue. The residents are now demanding that Baringo County should demand the full disclosure of all the money from the royalties deal of the enzymes. Lake Bogoria contains an unusual array of microbes and micro-organisms from which enzymes have been produced for use in antibiotics and cleaning products.