Beyond the Screen: How Kokotoni Communities in Kilifi County Are Turning Stories into Action

In Kokotoni, Kilifi County in the Kenyan coast, residents are navigating the severe environmental and social challenges associated with mining while seeking stronger community participation in decisions around local resources. Through community dialogue, visual storytelling, and the newly gazetted Community Development Agreement (CDA) committee, residents are transforming local governance to ensure development responds directly to the needs of the people living closest to these resources.

For communities living alongside the quarries in Kokotoni, the environmental impacts of mining are not an abstract concern but a daily reality. Residents describe living with persistent dust, noise from heavy machinery and explosives, and concerns about the effects of quarry activities on their health and environment.

Living with the Impacts of Quarrying

As a member of the Karsan Kokotoni CDA Committee, Simba Mkamba has witnessed these challenges firsthand. He describes how the impacts of quarrying have become part of everyday life for families in the community, with residents, including expectant mothers, bearing the consequences of activities they say have not been adequately addressed.

“Here in Kokotoni, we are affected by the dust from the quarry emissions. They use heavy explosives, and they are not supposed to do that. That affects us since the explosives are very loud, the quarry activities are also very loud, the dust too, and they haven’t done anything to protect us from the harmful effects. The locals are coughing. Expectant mothers are affected”, he says.

Creating a Film to Bring Out the Voices of the Community

These relentless disruptions have forced some families off their ancestral lands, shattering the traditional African bond of community cohesion.

However, the narrative in Kokotoni has shifted from passive suffering to active community mobilization. Recognizing that local grievances were consistently ignored by conventional media, Haki Ni Yetu grantee OneMillionTrees4Kilifi produced a powerful documentary film to document these lived experiences and change the public conversation around accountability and civic rights.

Elphic Tossi, founder and director of OneMillionTrees4Kilifi, explains the core intent behind using community-led storytelling as a tool for advocacy:

“Our project was based on creation of a film, a film that is supposed to showcase what is happening in Kilifi, and specifically Kokotoni, where mining is taking place and we have a lot of environmental, health issues and also economic issues that are affecting the community. So the project was supposed to outline what is happening, or rather, bringing out the voices of the community, that is rarely brought out in mainstream media.”

“The film amplified the voices and lived experiences of affected community members, bringing issues that are often overlooked by mainstream media into wider public view. By documenting these experiences, the film helped generate greater awareness of the impacts of mining on the community and provided a platform for residents to raise their concerns, demand accountability and draw the attention of relevant stakeholders to the challenges they face”, he says.

By bringing these hidden struggles into the open, the film served as a major catalyst for local civic action. Raising awareness, however, was only the first step; the critical challenge was translating community concern into enforceable legal protection. Under the Mining Act, local resource-hosting communities are legally entitled to receive direct community development allocations specifically a 1% share of mining revenues managed through a formal Community Development Agreement (CDA).

Prior to the intervention by OneMillionTrees4Kilifi, local residents lacked key information regarding these constitutional and legal rights. The process of establishing a representative CDA committee was initially fraught with division and delays. In nearby Kamberibe, committee formation had been postponed multiple times due to political disagreements, disputed elections, and misunderstandings over whether sitting on the board was a paid job or a public service.

Barazas Put Citizens at the Centre

To address these hurdles, grassroots organizers hosted public community gatherings (barazas) at the local chief’s office to clarify the true purpose of civic governance structures. Organizers helped residents understand that the committee acts as an essential bridge between investors, government bodies, and the community to secure fair benefits such as student bursaries and environmental safeguards rather than serving as a personal employment opportunity.

Youth activist Suleiman Kiya highlights how these educational barazas helped the community overcome internal deadlocks to achieve successful elections and official government gazettement of their CDA committee:

“Before One Million Trees came, we had different challenges, whereby the community members were not able to identify their injustice issues like, for instance, the 1% issue, which is under the Mining Act. And finally, last year we managed to conduct a baraza and finally we got a CDA committee”, says Kiya.

Suleiman further emphasized the vital role of youth leadership and community organization in holding resource extraction companies accountable:

“The most important thing, why the community is supposed to organize themselves and mobilize themselves, is that, when there is a challenge, it’s an opportunity to raise their voices at the community… It’s so important to organize and mobilize themselves, so that they can get their rights as community members, and also to make sure that they’re benefiting from funds, that are going to be raised by the company.”

Today, the gazetted CDA committee stands as a functional framework for local justice. While challenges remain regarding full capacity and continuous training for committee members, the combination of documentary film, community barazas, and legal empowerment has fundamentally rewritten Kokotoni’s story. Residents are no longer silent observers of resource exploitation; they are empowered stewards actively using formal accountability channels to protect their health, environment, and communal future.

Click the link below to watch the film produced by OneMillionTrees4Kilifi (in Swahili).

See also news article in Kenyans.co.ke: Cabinet Secretary Joho Appoints 83 Members to 9 Community Development Agreement Committees.

OneMillionTrees4Kilifi received funding through the Small Grants of the Haki Ni Yetu project. The Haki Ni Yetu project is funded by the EU Delegation to Kenya. You can learn more about the project here: https://kios.fi/en/haki-ni-yetu/

This page is funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the KIOS Foundation & The Haki Ni Yetu project and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.