The U.S. government charged two men — a Kenyan and a Guyanese — with conspiring to illegally divert USAID-funded global health supplies from the Kenyan government-run Kenya Medical Supplies Authority, or KEMSA.
The Kenyan program under examination — worth some $650 million — provided supply chain management for medical supplies used in the care and treatment of people living with HIV — as part of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan on AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, as well as warehousing for family planning, nutrition, and malaria commodities.
While the details of the investigation outlined in the court documents are slim — and don’t implicate KEMSA — the case does give greater insight into what was happening behind the scenes during a tense period between the U.S. Agency for International Development — which was dismantled this year — and the Kenyan agency.
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
