A BBC Africa Eye has uncovered damning evidence of a thriving underground network in Kenya that snatches babies from their mothers and sells them.
A BBC Africa Eye investigation has revealed the existence of a secretive but thriving illegal market for babies and young children in Kenya. For over a year, a team of undercover investigators infiltrated a series of child trafficking rings that extend from the slums of Nairobi to one of the country’s biggest hospitals.
Led by reporter Njeri Mwangi, our investigation uncovered evidence of new born babies being stolen from their mothers and sold on the streets of Nairobi for as little as $400.
Working with a network of informers and whistle blowers, Africa Eye uncovered a trade in human lives that preys on the country’s most vulnerable women, leaving unimaginable trauma in its wake.
According to our evidence, new-born babies are sold from a network of unlicensed clinics in slum areas, are snatched from homeless mothers, or even stolen to order by corrupt medical staff in city hospitals.
These babies are then sold on to desperate women eager to shortcut Kenya’s complex adoption laws, or, according to one trafficker featured in the investigation, are used in human sacrifice rituals.
The perpetrators range from desperate opportunists to organised criminals. Often the people doing the snatching are petty criminals like Anita – a heavy drinker and drug user who steals babies from street mothers to sell on to a local businesswoman.
Or people like Mary Auma – who runs a makeshift clinic in a slum where poor women are pressured to sell their babies for meagre sums, while Mary negotiates to sell them on for a hefty profit.
