ENACT has a great report out on heroine trafficking along the eastern seaboard of Africa (most of the heroine comes from Afghanistan):

In recent years, the volume of heroin shipped from Afghanistan along a network of maritime routes in East and southern Africa appears to have increased considerably. Most of this heroin is destined for Western markets, but there is a spin-off trade for local consumption. An integrated regional criminal market has developed, both shaping and shaped by political developments in the region. Africa is now experiencing the sharpest increase in heroin use worldwide and a spectrum of criminal networks and political elites in East and southern Africa are substantially enmeshed in the trade. This report focuses on the characteristics of the heroin trade in the region and how it has become embedded in the societies along this route. It also highlights the features of the criminalgovernance systems that facilitate drug trafficking along this coastal route.

The report provides a detailed analysis of the political economy of drug trafficking in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. Among these countries, only Tanzania’s political elites appear to not have links to known drug barons.

In the specific case of Kenya:

Between 2001 and 2008, there were numerous public allegations of drug trafficking in Kenya, and several MPs and their associates were named. Of those listed in a US embassy report, and subsequently named in Parliament as being linked to the narcotics trade, six are current or former holders of political office. Among them, five have held (or still do hold) political office in Kenya’s Eastern Province: William Kabogo, former Kiambu County governor; Gideon Mbuvi (alias Mike Sonko), 2nd Governor of Nairobi; John Harun Mwau, former assistant minister and former MP for Kilome; Simon Mbugua, former MP for Kamukunji (in Nairobi); and Mary Wambui, former MP for Othaya.

From the coastal region, Ali Hassan Joho, Governor of Mombasa, and his brother Abubakar, as well as Mombasa businessman Ali Punjani, were also named as prominent drug traffickers in the same report (in fact, the US report allegedly claims that Punjani and several other traffickers funded Ali Hassan Joho’s 2007 campaign to win a seat as an MP for Mombasa). Harun Mwau, along with businesswoman Mwanaidi Mfundo (alias Mama Lela), who is now in prison in Tanzania on drug-trafficking charges, were listed as drug ‘kingpins’ by the US in 2011. All have denied these allegations. A subsequent investigation into claims made in the Kenyan Parliament by police was said to have absolved them, but in very controversial circumstances.

Harun Mwau, perhaps the most prominent figure caught up in these allegations, has been widely cited by our interlocutors as an early ‘model’ of how to combine the shadow economy, politics and business. Mwau has repeatedly denied being involved in drug trafficking. He is a prominent businessman and former shareholder in the region’s biggest supermarket chain, Nakumatt (holding shares worth US$10 million, which he has since offloaded). He owned a bank (Charterhouse), and has had a varied political career: he headed the anticorruption agency and was a national lawmaker; he also ran for president. He was a major funder of Mwai Kibaki’s election campaign as president and was subsequently appointed as assistant transport minister, a position in which he appears to have been responsible for Kenya’s container transport arrangements and for the Kenya Ports Authority, which controls all ports of entry and inland container terminals in Kenya. Mwau resigned from this position after being named in Parliament as being linked to drug trafficking. For many years, Mwau operated an inland container depot at Athi River on the outskirts of Nairobi, known as the Pepe Container Freight Station.

The whole report is worth reading.