KALRO distances itself from KARI website full of explicit content

KALRO says it stopped using KARI website in 2014. [File, Standard]

The Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) has distanced itself from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) website that appears to have been hacked.

The KARI website has been publishing sexually-explicit content and adverts.

A Facebook user, Rhoda Tsuma Mwebesa, took to the social media platform to ask KARI to report the offending website.

KARI changed its name to KALRO in August 2014 after it was merged with the Coffee Research Foundation and the Kenya Sugar Research Foundation.

The research agencies were merged under the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Act 2013.

That meant that a new website had to be formed, and KARI abandoned its previous website (kari.org) and created a new one kalro.org.

It is the old website (kari.org) that has been publishing sexually-explicit content.

A communications representative of KALRO told The Standard that after KARI was discontinued in 2014, the agency abandoned its old communications platforms.

“Someone hijacked our old domains, and decided to publish obscene content. We had filed a report with the DCI, and we’ll follow up on the progress, especially now that the old website is causing us a lot of reputational harm,” said the KALRO representative, who asked not to be identified, saying the director-general will address the matter “comprehensively”.

“The best response would come from our director-general [Eliud Kiplimo Kireger]. Kindly write an email addressed to him, and he will delegate the function of responding to the communications department,” said our informant.

“However, I can assure you that we have written to the investigative agencies to handle the matter.”

The Standard’s subsequent refreshes on the KARI website gave an “internal server error 500” feedback.

“Sorry, that didn’t work. Please try again or come back later,” said the breakdown response.