diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index c7ebd8d..5eb29c5 100644
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -1,20 +1,21 @@
 Source: swh-journal
 Maintainer: Software Heritage developers <swh-devel@inria.fr>
 Section: python
 Priority: optional
 Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 9),
                dh-python (>= 2),
                python3-all,
-               python3-kafka,
+               python3-kafka (>= 1.3),
                python3-nose,
                python3-setuptools,
                python3-swh.core,
                python3-swh.storage,
                python3-vcversioner
 Standards-Version: 3.9.6
 Homepage: https://forge.softwareheritage.org/diffusion/DJNL/
 
 Package: python3-swh.journal
 Architecture: all
-Depends: ${misc:Depends}, ${python3:Depends}
+Depends: python3-kafka (>= 1.3), ${misc:Depends}, ${python3:Depends}
+
 Description: Software Heritage Journal utilities
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 3b46e89..8e2de55 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Add here external Python modules dependencies, one per line. Module names
 # should match https://pypi.python.org/pypi names. For the full spec or
 # dependency lines, see https://pip.readthedocs.org/en/1.1/requirements.html
-kafka-python
+kafka-python >= 1.3
 msgpack-python
 vcversioner