Kenya is making significant strides toward establishing a sustainable dairy industry, which is crucial for enhancing food security, meeting nutritional needs, and fostering economic growth.
The Kenya Dairy Board (KDB) is actively implementing the “Kenya Dairy Industry Sustainability Roadmap 2023-2032.” This initiative aims to transform the dairy sector to meet rising demand for milk and dairy products while ensuring food safety and environmental protection.
KDB’s Managing Director, Margaret Kibogy, has been leading efforts alongside industry experts to visit dairy processors as part of the roadmap’s execution.
Launched in December, the roadmap is a comprehensive 10-year strategy focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, aligning with national and global commitments, including the Dairy Net Zero campaign.
Kibogy emphasized the need for a concerted industry-wide approach that addresses economic, social, and environmental sustainability challenges. She stated, “The Kenyan dairy industry plays a vital role in providing solutions to these issues.”
This necessitates a shift toward more sustainable practices and business models, especially among smallholder and medium-sized dairy producers.
Key pillars of the roadmap include ensuring sufficient milk production to meet domestic needs and export targets, providing quality and affordable milk while supporting decent livelihoods, and minimizing the environmental impact of dairy operations.
The roadmap aims for a 32% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, in line with Kenya’s sustainable development goals.
KDB is also focused on enhancing fodder production through dairy cooperatives and encouraging the consolidation of operators to create financially sustainable entities. Partnerships with global entities are being sought to drive innovation, market diversification, and carbon capture efforts.
According to Kibogy, the roadmap unites key industry stakeholders and the government to establish a strategic vision for a sustainable dairy industry, complete with priority interventions and targets.
Goals include ensuring that at least 80% of marketed milk is handled through cold chains, achieving a minimum of 60% formal processing, lowering retail prices of packaged milk by at least 20%, and doubling dairy farmers’ monthly incomes.
The initiative fosters collaboration across the dairy value chain, promoting sustainable practices through innovative business solutions.
With a population growth rate of around 2% annually, Kenya’s population reached 50.6 million in 2022, with a GDP of Sh13.4 trillion. Agriculture remains the largest sector of the economy, with the dairy sub-sector contributing about 4% to GDP and supporting over 1.8 million smallholder farmers.
Kenya produces over four billion liters of cow milk annually, ranking among the highest in Africa in terms of production and per capita consumption.
Despite its contributions to livelihoods and food security—providing 7.3% of caloric intake in 2021—the sector faces challenges, including underutilized processing facilities running at less than 50% capacity due to insufficient milk supply.
There is a prevalence of non-commercial dairy farms struggling to achieve profitability, as noted in the roadmap.
Additionally, the industry faces fragmentation, with governing bodies often inactive, which hampers coordinated efforts to tackle challenges.
Customers are becoming increasingly concerned about the industry’s ability to deliver safe, high-quality products at affordable prices.
Climate change poses further risks, with the dairy and livestock sectors particularly vulnerable to its impacts. Prolonged droughts and environmental degradation threaten productivity.
Kibogy expressed hope that the roadmap will enable Kenya to adopt modern, climate-smart technologies to produce an additional 2.5 billion liters of quality milk annually, thereby meeting rising demand.
This initiative aligns with broader goals of modernizing farming, enhancing trade opportunities, and driving rural transformation as part of Kenya Vision 2030 and the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.
