Kenya’s initiative to establish a sustainable dairy industry is gaining momentum among stakeholders, enhancing the country’s long-term strategies for food security, nutritional needs, and economic growth.
The Kenya Dairy Board (KDB) has made significant progress in implementing the “Kenya Dairy Industry Sustainability Roadmap 2023-2032,” which aims to transform the dairy sector by ensuring it meets the rising demand for milk and dairy products without compromising food safety or causing environmental harm.
KDB Managing Director and CEO Margaret Kibogy has been leading the agency, along with industry experts, on visits to dairy processors as part of the ongoing efforts to implement the roadmap. Launched in December last year, this comprehensive 10-year plan is designed to revolutionize the dairy industry, primarily aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and align with national and global commitments under the Dairy Net Zero campaign.
“To reach its potential while addressing threats to its stability and future, Kenya’s dairy industry needs a concerted, industry-wide effort focused on sustainability—economic, social, and environmental,” Kibogy stated. “The Kenyan dairy industry has an active role to play in providing solutions to these challenges and in realizing sector ambitions.”
This requires an accelerated shift to more sustainable practices and business models, characterized by a more intensive and commercially oriented production system among smallholder and medium-sized dairy units. Key pillars of the roadmap include:
- Prosperity: Producing enough milk to meet domestic demand and export targets competitively.
- People: Providing quality, safe, and affordable milk while ensuring decent livelihoods across the industry.
- Planet: Reducing the environmental footprint of the dairy industry to help meet Kenya’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets and governance principles.
The NDC aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 32% by 2030, in line with Kenya’s sustainable development agenda through low-carbon and climate-resilient growth. KDB is committed to promoting industrial-scale, collectively contracted fodder production and procurement by leading dairy cooperatives, as well as consolidating actors into fewer, better-capitalized, and financially sustainable entities.
Furthermore, it is advancing joint ventures with global partners to foster innovation, market diversification, carbon capture, and coordinated industry efforts to uplift the entire sector.
“Based on in-depth situation analysis, the Kenya Dairy Industry Sustainability Roadmap brings together key industry players and the government to establish a strategic vision for a sustainable dairy industry in Kenya, with priority interventions and targets to achieve that vision,” said Kibogy.
The roadmap aims to ensure that at least 80% of marketed milk output passes through the cold chain, whether marketed formally or informally. It sets a goal for at least 60% of marketed milk to be formally processed, lowers the retail price of packaged whole milk by at least 20% from early 2023 highs, and seeks to increase dairy farm owners’ monthly earnings to at least double the minimum wage.
According to Kibogy, the roadmap facilitates collaboration among dairy industry stakeholders across the value chain, allowing them to develop a common approach to advancing sustainable practices through business solutions and broader sector partnerships.
Kenya is a lower middle-income country with ambitious growth objectives, serving as a key hub for the East African region. The country’s population is growing at around 2% annually, reaching 50.6 million in 2022, with a total GDP of Sh13.4 trillion, according to the Economic Survey 2024.
While the country is rapidly developing and urbanizing, agriculture remains the largest sector of the economy. The dairy sub-sector contributes about 4% to the country’s GDP and supports over 1.8 million smallholder farmers. With an annual production of over 4 billion liters of cow milk, Kenya’s dairy industry is among the highest in Africa, with per capita dairy consumption also exceeding that of other regional countries.
In addition to supporting livelihoods, the sector plays a crucial role in food security and nutrition, with milk serving as a significant source of nutrition, accounting for 7.3% of calorific supply in 2021, ranking fourth after cereals, pulses, and sugar sweeteners.
However, the sector is currently underperforming, with existing processing facilities operating below 50% capacity due to insufficient milk supply. “There is a prevalence of non-commercial dairy farms unable to turn a profit and provide a decent living for farmers,” KDB notes in its roadmap.
According to industry reports, the governing bodies and associations in the sector are fragmented and, in some cases, inactive, which is concerning given the urgent need for a coordinated effort to tackle industry challenges. Customers are increasingly skeptical about the industry’s ability to deliver safe, high-quality products at affordable prices.
The dairy and livestock sectors are particularly vulnerable to climate change, having been severely impacted by consecutive failed rainy seasons in Kenya. Dairy farming faces a significant risk of further declines in productivity due to increasingly variable weather patterns and the long-term effects of environmental degradation.
“It is our expectation that the roadmap will enable the country to employ modern technology and climate-smart approaches to competitively produce, process, and market an additional 2.5 billion liters of quality milk per year to meet growing demand,” Kibogy said.
This roadmap aims to usher in modern farming practices, efficient manufacturing, cutting-edge research and development, increased financing, and enhanced trade opportunities, all of which have broader implications for rural transformation, in alignment with Kenya Vision 2030 and the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.
