The government is exploring a major water evacuation and irrigation project aimed at lowering the rising levels of Lake Baringo, amid growing concern that the freshwater lake could merge with the neighbouring saline Lake Bogoria and trigger a serious ecological disaster.
The update was given on Friday by Defence Principal Secretary Dr Patrick Mariru, who disclosed that a high-level meeting had been convened with the Principal Secretary for Irrigation and his technical team to chart possible interventions. Brigadier Titus Sokobe of the Defence forces also joined the discussions.
“Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria are on the verge of merging, if urgent interventions are not taken. It will cause an ecological disaster. One lake is salty, and the other is freshwater,” Mariru said.
According to the PS, Lake Baringo’s water level has risen by between 12 and 14 metres over the past 15 years, with roughly two billion cubic metres of additional water accumulating during the same period. The lake’s surface area has expanded from 108 square kilometres to approximately 130 square kilometres, submerging homes, schools, roads and other public amenities and displacing communities that depend on the lake for their livelihoods.
To address the crisis, the government is considering evacuating excess water from Lake Baringo to irrigate more than 100,000 acres of land in Baringo and parts of Turkana County. The project is expected to be financed through a private investment model, with the Ministry of Defence taking the lead in constructing evacuation tunnels and primary, secondary and tertiary canal networks to transport the water to farmland.
“Defence will be involved in doing the evacuation tunnels and primary, secondary and even tertiary canals. The preliminary phase of this programme is on course,” Mariru said.
Government estimates indicate that close to 380,000 people within the Lake Baringo basin are either at risk or have already been affected by the continued swelling of the Rift Valley lakes. If fully implemented, the scheme would place more than 100,000 acres under irrigation, more than three times the size of the Mwea Irrigation Scheme, currently Kenya’s largest fully developed public irrigation project.
Officials say the initiative could simultaneously ease the flooding threat to lakeside communities while opening up arid and semi-arid land in Baringo and Turkana for commercial agriculture, boosting food production, creating jobs and strengthening climate resilience in the region. The preliminary phase, including technical studies and feasibility assessments, is already under way.
