Last year, Kenyan firms lost KES500 million ($6.8 million) as a result of shoe and textile counterfeiting. Reports indicate that the counterfeiting market in the country has doubled in the last ten years as a result of technological advance, lax controls and a lack of appropriate legislation.

Industrialists are appealing to the government to introduce a new law which would help to prevent the production and sale of illegal counterfeit goods. They are favouring a proposal that would raise the maximum penalty imposed on those found guilty of dealing in counterfeit goods from KES$2 million, as it stands now, to KES$5 million ($68,000).