New Kenya Tea Development Agency chairman faces daunting task to move the industry to the next level

By Ben Kinyanjui

For the last 40 years, Patrick Kinyua has seen his living standards improve courtesy of his 5,000 tea buses he tenders and delivers to Mununga tea factory in Kirinyaga County.Newly appointed KTDA board chairman Mr Peter Kanyago faces a big task ahead

Though the earnings have not met his expectations all the time, Kinyua is glad that he has never missed his monthly payment for as long as he can remember. Through the meager earnings, the farmer has been able to put all of his seven children through secondary education.

“We are better off than our neighbours who mainly rely on coffee farming. Though coffee earned far higher than tea in the early seventies to eighties, the trend has changed and tea farmers are now guaranteed of a monthly income,” he says.

“We are able to plan better and we can access credit from commercial banks and other lending institutions because our creditworthiness has improved.”

The monthly income is besides the second payment commonly referred to as ‘bonus’ paid at the end of the year.

However, Kinyua and most tea farmers that market their tea through the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) have faced numerous challenges along the way, topmost being post harvest losses when factory processing capacity was limited.

Poor roads also made tea deliveries to the factories near impossible forcing the farmers to walk long distances to deliver their crop or leave it to lot in the collection centres leading to massive losses.

Mr Kinyua and thousands of small scale tea farmers in Kirinyaga County can now devote more time in the farms as roads have improved courtesy of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).

The County that was last month ranked third richest after Kajiado and Nairobi has four factories whose combined processing capacity has literary eliminated leaf wastage in the region.

The story is the same in Embu, Nyeri, Meru, Thika, Murang’a and Kiambu where tea processing capacity has been enhanced over the years to meet the demand of increased production.

However, the story is different in some parts of Rift Valley and Nyanza and especially in the larger Kisii district where farmers have experienced loses every year due to limited processing capacity.

That is why the newly appointed KTDA chairman Mr Peter Kanyago, cannot afford a holiday if he has to take the industry to the new level where farmers can get more from their proceedings.

Though tea farmers are undoubtedly the most progressive among peasant farming community in the country, analysts argue that they can get more money from their labour if the commodity was value added.

Currently, over 80 per cent of the Kenyan tea that is recognized worldwide for its high quality is sold though the auction at the Mombasa Tea Auction where it is bought to blend poor quality teas from other parts of the world.

Earlier efforts to add value to the product had flopped due to lack of political will and vested interests by some players in the industry.

Now that the long-serving Mr Stephen Mutai M’Imanyara, has retired after 22 years, , Mr Gachago has a big task ahead to spearhead the industry in that direction and ensure diversification of the export market away from the traditional market.

During the annual general meeting held mid last month, the board also re-appointed Mr Philip Ng’etich, as vice-chairman.

Mr Kanyago, 63, has served as director in the KTDA board for over a decade and brings in the industry varied and valuable experience gotten from a cross section of industries where he has business interests.

He is the chairman of Ecobank Kenya and Kenya Open Golf, a member of the NEPAD National Steering Committee and also sits on the boards of several major companies.

He holds an MBA in Industrial Management from Pacific States University in the USA.  He is a Fellow of the Chartered Certificate of Accountants (FCCA), a Fellow of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (FCPA-K), and a Fellow of the Kenya Institute of Management (FKIM).  

However, this might not be enough credentials to drive the industry if the tea taskforce report compiled four years ago that recommended a restructuring of KTDA structure in order to be more responsive to the needs of the farmers is not fully implemented.

The taskforce chaired by banker John Simba had recommended that KTDA be restructured and float shares at the Nairobi Securities Exchange where people from all walks of life would be able to buy shares.

Although most tea farmers would oppose the move, analysts say it is in the best interest of the entire tea industry as KTDA that accounts for over 70 per cent of the tea produced in the country would be able to raise cheaper capital to enable it penetrate retail markets in the tea consuming countries and especially in Europe.