Lake Naivasha’s shoreline has been on the move. When farmer Dickson Ngome leased his 1.5-acre plot in Kenya’s Rift Valley in 2008, his vegetables grew more than 2 kilometers from the water’s edge. This October, he woke to find his home and fields inside the lake—about a foot of water covering everything.
“It seemed as if the lake was far from our homes,” said his wife, Rose Wafula. “And then one night we were shocked to find our houses flooded. The water came from nowhere.”
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The couple and their four children now sleep on the first floor of an abandoned school, among thousands of residents displaced this year as Lake Naivasha swelled after heavy, prolonged rains that began in September. Across Kenya’s Rift Valley, rising lakes have upended livelihoods, swallowed infrastructure and forced a rethinking of how people live and work along some of East Africa’s most ecologically and economically important waters.
Scientists and officials say the drivers are layered. Climate change is intensifying rainfall patterns and raising temperatures, which in turn alter how watersheds absorb and release water. At the same time, decades of land-use change and sedimentation are reshaping the lakes’ hydrology, narrowing buffers that once protected communities during wet cycles.
“The lakes have risen almost beyond the highest level they have ever reached,” said Simon Onywere, who teaches environmental planning at Kenyatta University in Nairobi. He noted that in Lake Baringo, north of Naivasha, levels climbed “almost 14 meters,” inundating hotels and public buildings that remain submerged. “Everything went under, completely under.”
Lake Naivasha tells a similar story, only more gradual. After years of worry that the lake was receding, levels began a steady climb around 2011. This season’s deluge accelerated that rise, pushing water across farms and settlements along the southern shore. The tourism hot spot, ringed by iconic acacia stands and known for hippos and birdlife, is also Kenya’s floriculture hub. Greenhouses that once sat safely inland now sit on the waterline; Onywere says some operations have been “engulfed” by as much as three-quarters.
The economic stakes are high. Horticulture is a pillar of Kenya’s export economy, generating just over $1 billion in revenue in 2024, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and providing about 40% of the roses sold in the European Union. Disruptions to Lake Naivasha’s flower farms ripple through global supply chains and local jobs.
What is happening at Naivasha is part of a broader East African pattern. A study in the Journal of Hydrology last year found lake surface areas across the region expanded by 71,822 square kilometers between 2011 and 2023. In Kenya’s Rift Valley alone, more than 75,000 households had been displaced by 2021, according to a study commissioned by the Environment Ministry and the United Nations Development Program. The headline images of submerged schools and clinics at Lakes Baringo, Nakuru and Turkana in 2020–2021 were not an anomaly—they were a warning.
Pinning down exact causes requires careful attribution. “There are researchers who come up with drivers that are geological, others with reasons like planetary factors,” said Kenyan meteorologist Richard Muita, now acting assistant director at the Kenya Meteorological Department. “The Kenya Meteorological Department found that the water level rises are associated with rainfall patterns and temperature changes. When the rains are plentiful, it aligns with the increase in the levels of the Rift Valley lake waters.”
Equally important, Muita said, is what washes off the land. “There’s a lot of sediment, especially from agricultural related activities, that flows into these lakes.” Sediment can raise lakebeds and choke inflows and outflows, exacerbating seasonal swings and shrinking the margin for error when storms arrive.
The impacts in Naivasha are compounded by the long shadow of governance decisions. The lake’s official high-water mark—1,892.8 meters above sea level—was set in 1906 by the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association and remains the reference point used by surveyors. This year’s flood, while destructive, was still almost a meter below that historic line. Much of Kihoto, the community where Ngome and Wafula lived, lies within that riparian zone—land that by law should remain public and undeveloped.
“It’s a mess established by the government … towards the late 1960s,” said Silas Wanjala, general manager of the Riparian Association. Back then, a “temporary agricultural lease” was issued in Kihoto. When floods came and the leaseholder left, workers stayed and later secured subdivisions. Over six decades, those parcels grew into a dense settlement on land that was never supposed to be sold or built up. This is not the first time Kihoto has flooded, Wanjala said, just the worst in a generation. Today, returning residents risk not only water but hippos that patrol the new shoreline.
Local officials are treating the crisis with urgency. “We are tackling this as an emergency,” said Joyce Ncece, chief officer for disaster management in Nakuru County, which oversees Lake Naivasha. The county has provided trucks to help families relocate and has paid rent for those without means. But those measures are stopgaps. As Onywere and Muita argue, longer-term solutions require both climate action and better planning in harm’s way.
There are paths forward. Strengthening watershed management to slow runoff and reduce sediment loads would improve resilience whether years are wet or dry. Enforcing riparian setbacks around lakes—using the century-old high-water mark as a guide—would keep critical buffer zones open to absorb floods. Investments in nature-based solutions, including conservation agriculture that minimizes soil disturbance, can keep topsoil in the fields and out of the lakes while safeguarding yields.
At the same time, the scale of change demands a safety net for people who did nothing wrong beyond building where authorities permitted or failed to prevent. That means fair, transparent resettlement for families who may never see their plots again, and infrastructure that anticipates higher highs and lower lows in a warming climate.
What could help now and next:
- Enforce riparian zoning and halt new construction below the established high-water mark.
- Expand nature-based watershed measures—reforestation, terracing and conservation agriculture—to reduce runoff and sedimentation.
- Invest in lake monitoring, early warning systems and open data so communities can act before waters reach doorsteps.
- Design flood-ready infrastructure—elevated roads, relocatable utilities and protected evacuation routes—in known risk areas.
- Provide sustained relocation assistance and livelihoods support for displaced households, not just one-off emergency aid.
For Ngome and Wafula, policy debates feel far away. Their children are trying to keep up with schoolwork from borrowed desks in an empty classroom. The family makes occasional trips back to check on what used to be their farm, now a shallow bay where reeds sway and hippos surface at dusk. The past 15 years have brought one direction of change for Lake Naivasha: up. The question for the next 15 is whether Kenya can turn an emergency into a plan—one that lets people live with the lakes, not at their mercy.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
