Kenya is awash in fake cosmetics, placing consumers at risk of purchasing inferior and possibly hazardous products.
When Chepkoech Limo woke up with black, cracked lips on an October morning in 2017, she turned to social media for answers.
“Who else is experiencing dark lips and a burning sensation in the evening after using lipstick all day?” Limo wrote on Facebook.
The post elicited an avalanche of similar complaints and ignited a social-media conversation about a pervasive and growing problem in Kenya: counterfeit cosmetics.
Limo believed she had bought a genuine brand-name lipstick. But the consensus on social media was that she had unwittingly purchased a dodgy knockoff that looked uncannily similar to a popular international brand.
Two years on, Kenya is awash in fake cosmetics, placing consumers at risk of purchasing inferior and possibly hazardous products and leaving high-end retailers scrambling to differentiate their products from potentially dangerous doppelgangers.
In downtown Nairobi, it is only 8:15am, and Milka is already looking overwhelmed. The counter of her tiny kiosk-sized cosmetics shop teems with customers. While they wait patiently to be served by her and a shop assistant, more customers join the queue that winds down a narrow corridor
separating Milka’s kiosk from competing stalls.
Milka, who asked Al Jazeera not to use her surname, owns and operates one of hundreds of such shops on the ground floor of a four-storey building located on Nairobi’s infamous Dubois Road.
Widely regarded as the hub of cheap knockoff cosmetics in Kenya, Dubois Road – along with River Road – is home to thousands of wholesale-cum-retail outlets, from which makeup is distributed across the country to Kenya’s growing legions of beauty enthusiasts.
Increasing disposable incomes, urbanisation and population growth have fed a surge in the demand for colour cosmetics in Kenya, pushing the value of the market from an estimated 5.4 billion Kenyan shillings ($53.3m) in 2014 to 12 billion Kenyan shillings ($118m) in 2018, according to
global market research agency Euromonitor International.
Demand for premium brands is especially high. Multinational cosmetics firms have responded by opening shops in tony malls in Kenya and selling products through high-end, reputable retailers.
But counterfeiters have also moved in, selling brand-name imposters to consumers at cut-rate prices and sometimes duping reputable retailers into buying fakes.
The price discrepancies between a premium brand and a fake are stark. While the least expensive lipstick in a MAC store in Nairobi sells for around 2,800 Kenyan shillings (approximately $27.60), at Milka’s stall on Dubois road, lipsticks claiming to be MAC sell for as little as 150 Kenyan
shillings (approximately $1.50).
When asked by Al Jazeera why her prices are so low, Milka lowered her head and turned the question back around.
“What you want to know is whether what I have is counterfeit,” she said.
Milka told sources that the cosmetics she sells are shipped from China, and that in the past, customs officials have confiscated her inventory – as well as that of neighboring shops.
“The Anti-Counterfeit Agency (ACA) has been here harassing us on several occasions, and claiming that what we’re selling is counterfeited, but no one has come to us and shown us what the original products are or told us, ‘look, these are the differences here and here,'” she said. “They just
come and carry our goods away.”
A stroll down Dubois Road lays bare the Sisyphean task facing Kenyan officials.
Shop shelves burst with little boxes stamped with premium names. Lipsticks, foundations, mascaras, highlighters and whatnots – all of them purported to be all-the-rage cosmetics – are selling fast here.
In addition to products marked MAC, Al Jazeera saw those labeled Sleek, Black Opal, blackUp, Lime Crime, Kylie Cosmetics, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Gucci, and Fenty Beauty (pop singer Rihanna’s iconic beauty range).
If a brand has cache on the international market, a doppelganger is likely to end up for sale on Dubois Road.
