The Mountain Journal
Kenya’s Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe to stop with immediate effect from export of raw produce to the market, instead venture into value addition.
Kagwe called on African nations to confront the unfair global practice of tariff escalation, where developed markets allow raw agricultural commodities to enter at low or zero duty but impose significantly higher tariffs once they are processed.
Speaking at the World Food Prize Foundation’s DialogueNext Forum, he said the practice has for decades discouraged industrialisation across Africa, locking farmers into exporting cheap raw materials while jobs, wealth and manufacturing opportunities are created abroad.
“It is difficult to explain to an African farmer why it is acceptable to export raw coffee but prohibitively expensive to export roasted coffee,” he said.
The CS urged African countries to prioritise local value addition before export, citing Kenya’s ban on raw in-shell macadamia exports as an example of the direction the continent should take.
He added that the same approach should increasingly guide the coffee and tea sectors so that processing, branding and packaging are undertaken where the crops are grown.
“Every stage of processing completed within Africa creates jobs, increases farmers’ incomes and strengthens rural economies,” he said, adding that value addition should create employment for young people in manufacturing, logistics and agricultural technology.
He criticised policies that tax agro-processing machinery while governments simultaneously claim to support agricultural transformation, saying such contradictions discourage investment.
He further called for financing models tailored to farming cycles through flexible repayments, affordable long-term credit and weather-indexed insurance.
He maintained that reforming global trade rules, expanding local value addition and improving agricultural financing are essential to making farming more profitable, competitive and attractive to the next generation.
“If we truly believe in equitable global development, international trade rules must reward value addition, not punish it,” CS Kagwe said.
The remarks were delivered during the World Food Prize Foundation’s DialogueNext Forum, under the theme “Born to Feed the Future,” bringing together agriculture ministers, policymakers, scientists, development partners, private sector leaders and farmer organisations from across Africa and beyond.
