Agriculture
From The Report: Kenya 2017
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Agriculture is Kenya’s largest economic sector, and held its position as a major growth driver in 2015, with ideal weather conditions improving food security and cash crop export earnings. Despite economic uncertainty, the sector has been one of the most resilient in Kenya, with ongoing efforts to improve irrigation and bolster foreign investment, even as stakeholders continue to grapple with limited mechanisation and irrigation, spending cuts and insufficient value-added. Reducing reliance on rain-fed agriculture will be a critical priority for stakeholders as they seek to maintain the sector’s momentum in 2017. Despite domestic policy and labour challenges, Kenyan agriculture remains on track to continue driving national economic growth in 2017. Although production remains dependent on weather conditions, long-term strategies aimed at bolstering mechanisation and reducing rain-fed production should see the sector remain a growth driver for several years.

This chapter contains an interview with Peter Kimanga, Director, Gold Crown Beverages.

Articles from this Chapter

Overview

Hand on the tiller: Improved infrastructure is supporting output and exports
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Agriculture is Kenya’s largest economic sector, and held its position as a major growth driver in 2015, with ideal weather conditions improving food security and cash crop export earnings. Despite economic uncertainty, the sector has been one of the most resilient in Kenya, with ongoing efforts to improve irrigation and bolster foreign investment succeeding, even as stakeholders continue to grapple with limited mechanisation and irrigation, spending cuts and insufficient value-added. Reducing…

Analysis

Parcel project: Recent reforms are addressing land acquisition challenges
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The land acquisition process in Kenya has been seen as an obstacle in the past, but is improving, following the April 2014 decision of the newly-established National Land Commission (NLC) to seek the Supreme Court’s opinion regarding its functions and responsibilities against those of the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development (MLHUD). The decision, which re-iterated MLHUD’s responsibility for title issuance, will help prevent future incidents of application backlogs, which exacerbate…

Interview

A new leaf: Peter Kimanga, Director, Gold Crown Beverages, on the challenges ahead for local tea producers
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Interview: Peter Kimanga What can be done to insulate Kenya’s tea producers from global price volatility? PETER KIMANGA: First, we must overcome some challenges. We are too dependent on the export of bulk teas, which has narrowed our markets. We are trying to diversify and expand to countries which are not yet importing from us, and to do that we need to have value-addition. For instance, because of labour challenges in the West, they want to import finished goods as they are expensive to finish…

Analysis

Boosting growth: Horticulture expansion is supporting niche export products
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While much of Kenyan agriculture is comprised of subsistence and small-scale farming of crops like maise and sorghum, cash crops have become the country’s greatest foreign exchange earner. The country’s largest earners – tea and horticulture – had been in decline due to falling commodities prices and delays in arranging new trade treaties, but investment in processing facilities has created investment opportunities and helped these segments to play an important role in reducing raw exports…