An Emerging Cash Crop That Gives a Buzz

Deep into his stash of khat, Ibrahim Mahdi is buzzing by the time the evening call to prayer begins echoing from a nearby mosque. There will be no Muslim prayers for Mahdi this night.

He is in thrall to another tradition, one as old and, in these parts, as widespread as the faith of Muhammad. Mahdi chews khat, a seminarcotic leaf that has wired generations of Muslims from the coast of eastern Africa to Yemen, at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Outlawed in the United States and declared an addictive drug by the World Health Organization, khat remains a legal and cherished pastime in Kenya.

Each night in this Indian Ocean port, men young and old gather to chew, sharing gossip and debating politics or simply dreaming up a better life. Women chew too -- just separately.

These days, khat has become an unlikely cash crop, with exports to European countries like Britain, where large East African immigrant communities legally chew. The business reportedly pumps hundreds of millions of dollars a year into Kenya’s struggling economy.

“It is little bit of magic from Allah,” says Mahdi, stuffing fresh leaves in his mouth, his teeth and tongue coated in a green of saliva and chewed khat, also known as miraah in Kenya.

Khat (pronounced cot) is the stems and leaf of the Catha Edulis plant, a shrub native to Ethiopia, from where centuries ago it spread south to Kenya and Somalia and east to Yemen.

Adherents say it is best chewed within 48 hours of being picked, when the leaves are still fresh and packed with cathinone, a naturally occurring chemical similar to amphetamines.

Casual users say khat increases self-confidence, promotes clear thought and alleviates fatigue. The leaves and stems resemble tea and are held in the cheek, much like chewing tobacco.

It certainly has Mahdi going. The reedy young Somali shoots out thoughts in rapid-fire bursts, one moment discussing the politics of Somalia, his lawless native land, the next rhapsodizing about the wonders of the Swahili women of the Kenyan coast.

“So beautiful -- only if they take off their hijabs!” cackles the 21-year-old, referring to traditional Muslim headscarves.

Given WHO’s designation of khat as a “drug of abuse” in 1980, the Kenyan government takes a hands-off approach to monitoring the use and export of khat, despite its growing economic value.

Kenyans first began exporting khat to Europe in the late 1970s, but the trade was a relatively small until about a decade ago.

Since then, exports have grown more than 50%, says Leandro Bariu, chairman of Nyambene Miraa Trade Assn., the country’s largest khat industry group.

These days, khat exports bring in about $250 million a year, making the leaf one of the country’s largest foreign-exchange earners, Bariu says.

Most of the 150 tons of khat exported a week from Kenya goes to Somalia and to European countries like Britain and the Netherlands, where khat is legal and large populations of Yemeni, Somali and Kenyan immigrants eagerly await daily shipments.

A growing local market also helps support the 500,000 Kenyans who depend on khat for their livelihoods, Bariu says.

With world coffee prices at an all-time low, some coffee farmers in Kenya and Ethiopia are sowing their fields with khat.

On his small plot outside Meru, a town in central Kenya, farmer Fredrick Ntongomdu says he earns $390 a month from khat -- not bad in a country where more than half the people live on less than a dollar a day. Coffee, in contrast, was bringing him $260 a year.

In Ethiopia’s Harrerghe zone, southeast of the capital, Addis Ababa, khat trees now cover about 370,000 acres, coffee just a third of that, says Zenebe Woldu, a researcher at the Ethiopian government-run Institute of Biodiversity Conservation and Research. He estimates khat production in the region will increase by 700% over the next decade.

Although khat chewing is still largely an affair of coastal Muslims and the Meru tribe in central Kenya, it appears to be gaining popularity among other Kenyans from inland tribes.

Luos from western Kenya chew it on the shores of Lake Victoria. Kikuyu night watchmen in Nairobi munch it to stay alert through the dangerous nights in the crime-ridden capital.

Not everyone is taken with the plant.

Although khat “is often used in a social context similar to the manner in which coffee is consumed, chronic khat abuse can result in symptoms such as physical exhaustion, violence and suicidal depression,” the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says.

Bariu dismisses talk about addiction as nonsense.

“I myself have chewed for 30 years. But I only take a little bit each day after breakfast, lunch and dinner -- I am not an addict,” he says.

“I tell people that the best time to first take it is after breakfast -- have a few sticks and then brush your teeth and go to work,” he adds. “You will have a lot of energy.”