The dairy sector in Kenya will place priority on exports over supplying the domestic market in the wake of shortages attributed to post election violence.
Despite the violence, the industry projects to export some 16 million litres by the end of this year.
Kenya Dairy Board (KDB) managing director, Mr. Machira Gichohi said it was important to guard against losing the export market. Kenya’s main dairy export destination is the Middle East, where some 14 million litres of milk were exported last year. This was an improvement from the six million litres exported in 2006.
Gichohi said the post-election violence critically hurt the sector as most farmers were displaced, transport to processors cut off, causing delays in delivery and therefore unwarranted waste.
By December 2007, some 423 million litres of milk was delivered to processing plants across the country, which was a rise from the 362 million litres delivered the previous year and the highest in the last 20 years. The sector has so far undergone a 195% growth in the last five years and was targeting new export markets in Asia and other northern Africa countries before the outbreak of the violence.This is against a production scale of 3.8 billion litres in 2007, an increase from 2.8 litres in 2002. The growth is attributed to initiatives by the government to revive previously collapsed processing firms key among them the New Kenya Cooperative Creameries (KCC) and other regional plants.
New KCC chairman, Mr. Matu Wamae said lending banks to farmers had confirmed that they would loosen their conditions to help restock farmers who lost cattle and property in the skirmishes in efforts to re-empower the industry.
Kenya leads in milk production and export in the East Africa with most of the other countries producing just enough for their domestic market. In Africa, the country's main competitor in milk exports is South Africa, which has captured most of the export market.
"We are keen on protecting the export market because of the stiff competition posed by the likes of South Africa. It could hastily step in to fill the export gap if we ran short of supplies," said Gichohi.
There is a general world milk deficit following the drought that covered most of the southern hemisphere, an opportunity that the Kenyan milk industry is keen on capturing following increased production locally.
