The heat in Kenya enables exercising units who are preparing to deploy to hotter climates to mimic highly realistic scenarios when completing their training.

Through the UK and Kenya Defence Cooperation Agreement to tackle shared threats like the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, British troops help to train Kenyan soldiers.

• Light role training

BATUK is the British Army's Premier Light Role Infantry Training Centre.

• Community engagement projects

BATUK supports Kenyan communities through projects to maintain strong community bonds. Projects are selected in harmony with Kenyan Government priorities – water, health, education, conservation and recreational activities. There are also Royal Engineer exercises, which carry out civil engineering projects and medical deployments giving primary health care assistance to the community. The projects are an ideal opportunity for visiting soldiers to undertake work that will benefit the community and engage with the diverse cultures in Kenya.

British Army troops also help prevent poaching of endangered species such as rhinos and elephants, and are said to contribute £58 million to the Kenyan economy each year.

• Range Sweep

This is an annual clearance of BATUK’s training areas  to clear any items of unexploded ordnance after a training exercise.  This ensures safety in the training areas for the soldiers, non-military staff, local communities, and animals  living around the areas. Range staff carefully recording any blind or unexploded rounds during live-firing and normal practise is to clear them as soon as firing stops, but on rare occasions they can’t be found and this is when the search expertise of the Sappers, together with their partners from the KDF, comes to the fore. The sweep also includes outreach to the local communities on the dangers of UXO.

Training mimics real-life scenarios and puts troops through their paces as they prepare to deploy on operations. The exercises aim to challenge soldiers in a hot arid environment, living in basic camps in the bush, a far cry from the comforts of life in the UK. This allows battalions to prove themselves battle-ready.

• Delivering training through short-term training teams (STTTs)

The UK sends short-term training teams, more commonly known as STTTs, on deployments around the globe specially selected to work with partner nations to share skills. In Kenya, the STTTs provide high-quality training to the Kenyan Defence Force (KDF) covering a wide range of scenarios to allow troops to expand on their capabilities.

STTTs also provide train-the-trainer training, which allows the KDF to deliver training to their own troops after completing the course.

• Nanyuki-Nyati Barracks
• Kahawa Garrison-Kifaru Barracks

• Archers Post - Samburu County
• Lolldaiga - Laikipia County
• Swara - Samburu County
• Twiga - Samburu County

The British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) does not use chemical weapons in any of our training. We routinely use white phosphorus mortar rounds where conditions permit their use, to provide white light illumination for training at night only, as well as for smoke screening purposes only. The only range in Kenya that permits the use of white phosphorus mortar rounds is Archer’s Post Training Area (APTA).The British Army does not use white phosphorus mortar rounds as an incendiary weapon.

The range is cleared prior to exercises via outreach to the local pastoralist populations. This is conducted by range warden patrols and by locally contracted members of the pastoralist communities; helicopter sweeps, under contract with a local aviation company, are undertaken to ensure that wildlife are also clear of the impact areas.

This is followed by an annual Exercise RANGE SWEEP, when a Royal Engineer squadron is deployed to Kenya to find and identify any UXO and other salvage from the impact areas, and destroy it or clear it as appropriate, in a partnered exercise with the Kenyan Defence Forces. Range Sweeps are conducted annually on APTA, as directed under Article 10 of the Defence Cooperation Agreement.

The environmental impact of British Army Training in Kenya is monitored continuously by the UK Defence Infrastructure Organisation (Kenya) [DIO(K)] and this is backed up by an annual inspection visit by a specialist team deployed from DIO in the UK.

The use of white phosphorus in smoke grenades, decoy and countermeasure equipment and signalling flares is not prohibited under International Humanitarian Law (IHL). Use of white phosphorus in an incendiary weapon is governed by Protocol III of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) which prohibits incendiary weapons being deployed against civilians or military targets within a concentration of civilians. Incendiary weapons do not include munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems. Use of incendiary weapons in a way that does not comply with IHL remains unlawful.

As a signatory to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, the United Kingdom does not use chemical weapons under any circumstances.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) (www.opcw.org) uses the following short definition of a chemical weapon: A chemical used to cause intentional death or harm through its toxic properties. Munitions, devices and other equipment specifically designed to weaponise toxic chemicals also fall under the definition of chemical weapons.

Therefore, white phosphorus illumination munitions cannot be categorized as ‘chemical weapons.