Ahead of Valentine’s Day, the Central Bank of Kenya has delivered bad news for lovers and lovers of cash alike. It has made it illegal to make elaborate bouquets of flowers out of bank notes.
The announcement appears to have brought to a halt a craze that has swept Kenyan floral gift-giving in recent years.
Money bouquets, floral arrangements made from carefully-folded, colorful bills of cash, are a symbol of love with a practical twist: you feel loved and you feel richer. The bouquets have become popular across East Africa as well as in parts of Asia, fueled by demonstrations on social media of how to twist the bank notes into flowerlike cones and fold, tape or glue them into bunches.
“Everyone loves money,” said Mary Kanini, 27, a flower seller at Nairobi City Market this week, explaining their popularity. “Who doesn’t want money?”
In Kenya, that’s considered a defacement of currency, and it’s now illegal.
For the insecure, the bouquets provided an added benefit. You don’t have to worry about how much you are loved — you can count.
The money bouquets also added a revenue stream for the small army of flower sellers in Kenya, a country that is a major flower producer. The sector, which attracts many young people unable to gain work in the formal economy, operates largely through direct online sales and advertisements on Instagram and TikTok.
Sellers work from home and sell direct, which reduces overhead and expands the potential client base, according to Stephen Mbugua, 26, who followed his aunt into the flower business. Orders are delivered by motorbikes, known as “boda bodas” in East Africa.
Bouquets made from cash can also be twice as profitable as their floral equivalent, even with the hours it takes to source the notes and arrange them into complex designs, sellers said. A cash bouquet containing 30,000 Kenyan shillings, about $230, could fetch a profit of 5,500 shillings, about $42.
Since the ban, many money bouquet sellers have ceased advertising on social media.
Nairobi flower seller Annette Miya, 30, said she used to line up most mornings at a bank before heading to her stall at City Market, a downtown hub for flower sellers.
Now, she said she has found ways of continuing with the business on a smaller scale. On Thursday, she and a helper rolled bills and arranged them inside a gift box, carved out to read “I (Heart) U.” The process didn’t involve any taping or stapling of the bank notes, she said.
“I think it’s safer to do it this way,” she said, looking over her shoulder as she made the gift.
Other flower sellers have circumvented the ban in a different way. They still make flower bouquets. Except not with Kenyan shillings. They use dollar bills instead.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
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