By Elijah Nyaberi
With the government ban on the disastrous tea hawking menace and a fresh team at the helm of the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA), Kenya’s tea industry looks forward to a great future ahead.
Tea farmers now have a reason to face the future with confidence after the government announced new bold steps to see the industry thrive and earnings increase for the farmer.
President Ruto’s recent announcement that the government has committed Kshs 1 billion to build a value addition facility in Nairobi, similar to the KETEPA one in Kericho, is another step towards improving the earnings of farmers.
It was also music to the ears of the farmers when the President announced that the government had removed Value Added Tax (VAT) for locally packaged teas.
And the new KTDA leadership led by the chairman Chege Kirundi is a breath of fresh air as he has announced major reforms contained in a strategic plan that he will launch in July this year that puts farmers’ interests at the centre.
Kirundi said the new blueprint aims at repositioning KTDA on a long-term sustainability trajectory with particular emphasis on addressing climate change challenges, enhancing value addition and expanding market opportunities, especially in the African continent. He added that he plans to enhance farmer incomes by revising the allocation of profits from KTDA’s subsidiaries and reducing input costs, making
Kirundi noted that climate change is reducing yields and quality of tea, ageing tea farmers, declining acreage under tea owing to land subdivision and farmers ditching tea for high high-yielding real estate sector. KTDA and its 680,000 farmers contribute 60 per cent of all locally produced tea.
The Chairman added that with the boardroom fights now over, the leadership is reading from the same script, and the relationship with the government remains cordial.
Farmers have welcomed the positive messages coming from the government and the industry, and their key prayer is that politics be kept out of the tea industry and the ban on hawking be implemented fully.
As the demand for tea continues to grow globally and local consumption increases, an equivalent growth in returns is projected, ensuring that the sector remains profitable going into the future. The tea industry remains a critical pillar of the national economy and supports thousands of farmers directly and many other players along the value chain. Tea exports continue to be a major stabilizing factor of the Kenyan currency and the economy at large.
These gains have been built over the years mainly by the farmers who have ensured proper crop husbandry to maintain the high quality of tea, which fetches premium prices. However, politicization of the sector is threatening to claw back the gains, and serious instabilities have been reported in areas, especially West of the Rift Valley. Certain policy decisions have also impacted negatively on the industry, and a rethink is no longer optional but mandatory.
For this sector to remain standing and competitive, politics must be kept out, and management systems must be strengthened to introduce quality improvements and reduce operational costs.
The success of this sector cannot be discussed without mentioning the great role played by the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA), which manages over 50 factories with over 600,000 small-scale farmers. But KTDA’s important role is currently being undermined by the haphazard licensing of private factories without catchment areas and which are now encroaching on tea produced by farmers already under the wings of KTDA. Competition for green leaf from privately owned factories has led to decreased quality standards, which has become a challenge and which will impact on earnings of Kenyan tea in the global market.
A policy decision by the Ministry of Agriculture to introduce a reserve price, which was only forced on KTDA-managed factories, has had a negative impact. Private factories are not affected by the reserve and have been buying green leaf from farmers at a lower price.
This hawking menace is so brazen that you will find trucks from private factories lining up to purchase green leaves from KTDA factories owned buying centres. I request the Tea Board of Kenya (TBK) to enforce the elimination of tea hawking to return sanity to the sector, which will eventually benefit the farmer.
It was reassuring to hear Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe, while addressing tea brokers, buyers, and tea factory chairmen, order TBK to crack the whip on Green Leaf Tea hawking.
KTDA’s newly elected chairman Chege Kirundi, has also weighed on the issue and said collaboration was key in handling green leaf tea hawking to ensure the tea farmer benefits
Due to green leaf hawking, some KTDA factories are left with low green leaf, increasing their operational cost and reducing earnings for farmers. This has led to fear that these factories are facing collapse, putting the livelihoods of farmers and workers at serious risk.
Already, many KTDA factories in the West Rift Valley are struggling to remain operational amid deepening financial constraints that have left workers unpaid and farmers without reliable markets for their tea. It is said that leading politicians from the region are establishing numerous private tea factories, which some fear could be part of a larger scheme to undermine KTDA in the region.
The alleged collusion between powerful politicians and tea brokers has raised concerns that the West of Rift’s KTDA factories are being deliberately weakened to benefit private investors, with small-scale farmers being the biggest casualties of this shift in control.
The financial imbalance between KTDA factories in the West and East of the Rift has also been cited as evidence of a systemic crisis, with tea from the Western region fetching significantly lower prices despite being of comparable or even superior quality.
Critics argue that KTDA directors in the West of Rift have been reduced to mere figureheads who serve the interests of political elites rather than advocating for the welfare of workers and farmers.
Without urgent intervention, stakeholders fear that KTDA factories in the region may soon collapse, leaving thousands of farmers and employees without a source of livelihood.
The writer is a small-scale tea farmer
