Kenya to buy 200m litres of milk from EAC

Dar es Salaam. Tanzanian livestock keepers should prepare to exploit the Kenyan milk market after the industry regulator announced that the country is planning to import 200 million litres of the commodity from East Africa.

Xinhua news wire reported yesterday that the quantity is demanded only for this year and the East African countries will be targeted as main sources of imports.

The Chinese news agency quoted Ms Margaret Kibogy, the managing director of Kenya Dairy Board (KDB), saying Kenya is not self-sufficient in milk production due to rising consumption fuelled by rising incomes and urbanisation.

“We typically rely on the EAC trading bloc, which has a liberalised trading regime to meet milk consumer demand,” Ms Kibogy told Xinhua during the AgriFi Food Safety Programme forum.

Ms Kibogy said that imports from outside the EAC economic bloc are limited to specialised dairy products that are not available in the region in order to cushion the local dairy sector.

According to the milk regulator, Kenya processed approximately 648 million litres of milk in 2018.

Ms Kibogy said that Kenya is implementing a number of measures to ensure that annual processed milk reaches the one billion litres mark by end of 2022 in order to stop milk imports.

She added that Kenya’s milk production increased in January compared to a similar period last year but production has been declining since February due to the ongoing drought.

KDB is currently training farmers on pasture conservation techniques in order to ensure they maintain milk production despite the ongoing dry spell.

Kibogy noted that Kenya’s milk sector is susceptible to changing weather patterns due to over reliance on rain for livestock pasture.