On a moonless night in Naivasha, a Kenyan lakeside town, Anne sits inside her makeshift two-room house, worn out after a long day of picking and sorting roses. A single mother, she is among thousands of predominantly female workers in Kenya’s flower industry, laboring in the greenhouses that surround the picturesque Lake Naivasha, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) northwest of Nairobi.
Inside the vast, temperature-controlled greenhouses, as large as tennis courts, workers like Anne harvest an array of flowers flourishing in the rich Kenyan soil. They collect carnations, chrysanthemums, and an abundance of roses in nearly every hue, most of which are destined for European markets.
With over 15 years dedicated to the flower industry, one of Kenya’s largest employers, Anne’s monthly pay of just over $100 has hardly changed in years. Despite her long service, it is insufficient to cope with the rising cost of living in Kenya, which has driven up prices for essential goods like maize, wheat, rice, and sugar. At the end of each month, she often finds herself unable to afford enough food and has to skip meals.
“You have to enter into debt to survive,” she admits, explaining that she had to take out a loan to help her 23-year-old son attend university in Nairobi.
Every sunrise, Anne queues with hundreds of other workers for the company bus that transports them to the farms, as gentle fog envelops the hills before being burnt away by the blazing mid-morning sun. She starts work at 7:30 AM, six days a week, reserving Sundays for church.
Although her working day is supposed to last eight hours, she often feels pressured to extend her shifts by an additional three hours without receiving overtime pay. Anne recalls her time in the pack house, where flowers were cleaned, bunched, and sorted. The environment there was harsh, with stringent daily targets imposed by managers who pressured workers to meet their quotas.
“We had to grade 3,700 stems a day,” Anne recounts. She believes these targets are unrealistic, but like many workers, she feels she has no choice but to comply, fearing sanctions from farm managers if she fails to meet them. If she doesn’t hit her daily target, she is required to submit a written explanation to her manager. “If you don’t achieve it, maybe you can be thrown out,” she says.
In early 2023, Anne fell ill with a serious blood condition that could have been life-threatening if left untreated. Weak and short of breath, she found it challenging to work. She consulted a nurse at the farm who provided her with medication and allowed her to rest briefly before instructing her to return to work. “I told him: ‘You know, I’m too sick to work,’” Anne recalls.
Convincing the nurse of her genuine illness was difficult, but he eventually referred her to an off-farm doctor. Despite still feeling weak and undergoing treatment, she was granted only one day off. “It felt bad because I was still sick,” she says, highlighting the pressure she faces to justify her absence to her manager.
Anne is also concerned about the potential health risks posed by the chemicals she is required to use for spraying the roses. This apprehension is shared by many workers in the industry. Margaret, another flower picker from a nearby farm, reveals that workers are often compelled to spray hazardous chemicals without being provided with protective gear.
Meeting in the dim light of a colleague’s home near Lake Naivasha, Margaret expresses her fears about speaking out. She worries about retribution from the powerful flower industry, which she claims has an overwhelming influence in Naivasha. “Nobody cares,” she adds, reflecting the collective sentiment among workers.
A report published in September 2023 by the Nairobi-based NGO Route To Food Initiative highlighted the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides in Kenyan agriculture, including some linked to cancer.
Margaret has repeatedly voiced her concerns to her supervisors. “They shout to the men, they shout to the women,” she says. “They shout to everybody. They don’t care, and they are Kenyans.” She highlights that female workers are particularly vulnerable, often facing sexual harassment from male colleagues—an issue that has plagued the industry with numerous complaints.
In light of these allegations regarding sexual harassment, unpaid overtime, harsh working conditions, and the lack of protective gear on some flower farms in Naivasha, we reached out to both the Kenya Flower Council and the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS), the governmental body tasked with overseeing the industry. However, neither organization responded to our inquiries.
Beyond the human cost, Kenya’s flower industry also has significant environmental implications. The production of flowers is water-intensive, and to satisfy the European demand for inexpensive cut flowers, they are transported in refrigerated, gas-guzzling jets, wrapped in single-use plastic, and often arranged in toxic floral foam to maintain freshness.
Kenya supplies over 40% of Europe’s flower market, with the majority of blooms making their way to the Netherlands, which serves as the central hub for the European cut flower trade. Each day, flowers arrive by plane and are taken to the bustling flower market in Aalsmeer, where they are swiftly bought and distributed to suppliers across Europe.
In this vibrant market, lorries arrive constantly, and tourists look down from walkways as massive trolleys filled with flowers in every conceivable color are moved at lightning speed. Meanwhile, in supermarkets and florists throughout Europe, consumers purchase these inexpensive flowers for occasions like weddings and birthdays, often without any awareness of the experiences endured by workers like Anne and Margaret, who toil thousands of kilometers away to produce them.
As a single mother supporting her son, Anne feels trapped in the flower industry. With limited job opportunities in Naivasha, she fears the prospect of having no income at all. “If God helps me,” Anne says, “I will move on.”
