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Tea farmers in Kericho County, Kenya - Image credit: Lou Del Bello
At the last checkpoint before leaving Nairobi’s boundaries, I present the “special COVID-19 media pass”, receive a nod from the officer and out I speed onto the open road. Deep exhale. It feels good to leave the confines of the city for the first time in three months.
I’m heading down to the Kenyan-Tanzanian border for a story I’m writing for the FT on how Kenya’s horticulture trade has been devastated by COVID-19.
After a 3-hour drive, I reach the picturesque border town of Namanga, which is surrounded by the Ol Donyo Orok mountain. I’m welcomed by the midday call to prayer and blazing sun. Outside the border clearance office, I find about 100 truck drivers huddled in groups of no more than six, standing in wait—with surgical masks— for the mandatory COVID-19 tests.
“I’ve been waiting to get my test results back from Nairobi for 5 days,” says Henry Njuguna, 49. “By now most of the onions I’m carrying are rotten.”
I hear the same story repeated several times by men frustrated with the costs incurred for their stay in Namanga and worried that none of what they’re carrying will make it to Nairobi’s markets.
In stark contrast, almost 300 kilometres north, farmers like Silas Mutuma, who owns the herb producer Jambofresh, are throwing away tonnes of fresh produce because COVID-19 disrupted trade with Europe. Mutuma sells only 5% of his rosemary, thyme, sage and basil in Kenya as there isn’t a local market.
“We export everything,” he tells me. “These are products mainly used by European countries.”
Plague
Unusual heavy rains from October to March linked to one of the strongest positive Indian Ocean Dipole on record, added with the worst locust plague to hit Kenya in 70 years, meant much of Kenya’s fresh produce was hurt even before COVID-19 struck. Eventually, when the pandemic did arrive, the government attacked it by closing airports, imposing air travel restrictions and a dusk till dawn curfew, which disabled smallholder farms from getting supplies and accessing markets.
Combined, this was a brutal thrashing for Kenya’s agricultural sector. One it might not easily recover from.
Mutuma and others in the Fresh Produce Association of Kenya say that destroying tonnes of French beans for which there is no local demand, while the country suffers food shortages, means Kenya needs to rethink how and what it produces. They say now is a good time to reflect on the structure of the sector. At present, 80% of Kenya’s horticulture exports go to Europe. Very little trade happens between neighbours, with only about 30 companies involved in the domestic market.
Producers like Mutuma say the government needs to step in now to help smallholders by providing subsidies. With climate change altering weather patterns and creating the perfect conditions for locusts, plus the pandemic interrupting trade, this year has highlighted that Kenya’s horticulture industry needs a total transformation if it's going to withstand these new obstacles and evade mass food insecurity.
Antoaneta Roussi is a journalist and writer based in Nairobi, Kenya
Must reads from the region
Kenyan farmers face uncertain future as COVID-19 cuts exports to EU, Antoaneta Roussi, Financial Times
Kenya’s horticulture industry is losing industry losing $1 million a day as the impacts of COVID-19 bite one of the country’s major industries.
How incoherent farm policies undermine Kenya’s transformation agenda, Timothy Njagi Njeru, The Conversation
Sorghum farming is just one example of when government efforts to transform rural economies into commercially viable communities backfires. Interventions mean demand is reduced, farmers’ costs increase, and jobs are lost throughout the value chain.
Another African Nation’s Thirst Takes Villagers’ Land, Mathabiso Ralengau and Antony Sguazzin, Bloomberg Green
An underfunded compensation program is threatening to push thousands of people off their land in one of the world’s poorest nations, Lesotho. Bloomberg journalists talk to the residents hit by the multibillion-dollar project to funnel water north to ward off a looming crisis in South Africa.
NGO accuses France of starting Mozambique 'climate bomb', Agence France Presse
French companies are said to be investing $60 billion in vast underwater gas reserves in Mozambique. The foreign investments are “forcing yet another African country into dependency on fossil fuels”, according to a new Friends of the Earth report.
What else I’ve been reading
Racism Is Killing the Planet, Hop Hopkins, Sierra
A lot of words have been written by a lot of good writers about the intersection of the parallel racism and environmental crises facing the world in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA. This powerful piece calls for unity, arguing that “… as long as we keep letting the polluters sacrifice Black and brown communities, we can’t protect our shared global climate."
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Who we are
Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.
Jocelyn Timperley is a freelance climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.
India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.
Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.