THE UK government has agreed to pay compensation to thousands of Kenyans who were affected by a fire caused by a British military training exercise four years ago.
The out-of-court settlement follows a lengthy legal battle in which 7,723 claimants said they had lost property and suffered health complications because of the 2021 fire in the Lolldaiga conservancy in Kenya’s Rift Valley.
A spokesperson from the British High Commission in Nairobi said the UK “accepts responsibility for the fire and that is why compensation has been paid”, adding “it is the right thing to do”.
The British government has not confirmed how much was paid out, but the lawyer in the case told the BBC it was £2.9 million.
The spokesperson from the British High Commission also said the compensation was “generous and fair” and based on a “rigorous assessment of the claims”.
Kevin Kubai called it the “best possible outcome” despite complaints from his clients that the sums they received were much too small to compensate their losses.
He said the alternative “would have been to continue litigation for another period of nearly seven years to be able to prove these cases on a case-by-case analysis”, which would be difficult because much of the evidence had been lost after four years.
Mr Kubai acknowledged that his clients did not have medical records backing up their claims of health damage due to smoke inhalation from the Lolldaiga fire, and that they were also exposed to smoke because they used firewood for cooking.
The UK Ministry of Defence said in 2022 that the fire had likely been caused by a camp stove knocked over during the training exercise in the conservancy. It found that around 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) of private land were damaged, but no community land was directly affected.
The legal action argued there had been environmental damage in surrounding communities because of the smoke, and the destruction of property because of stampeding wild animals.
The British government has helped the conservancy with restoration of the burnt area and the military exercises still take place there.
The Lolldaiga conservancy – about 49,000 acres of hilly bushland with a backdrop of the ice-capped Mount Kenya – is part of the Laikipia plateau, where hundreds of thousands of acres were seized by the British during the colonial era, leading to land disputes which continue to this day.
It is just 70km (45 miles) from the Lewa conservancy, where the Prince of Wales proposed to Kate Middleton in November 2010.
A few kilometres to the south are the newly refurbished Nyati Barracks, a £70m facility which is part of the British Army Training Unit Kenya (Batuk).
It hosts thousands of British troops every year for massive exercises in locations such as Lolldaiga, which offers ideal conditions for harsh environment training.
Batuk contributes tens of millions of pounds to the Kenyan economy annually.
But over the years controversy surrounding the behaviour of some of the soldiers has attracted media attention, including allegations of fatal hit-and-runs, murder and sexual exploitation of Kenyan women.