No one drinks oil or eats cobalt, but everyone needs food to survive. This has been the demand driver of Africa’s economic engine - agriculture. However, despite the sector employing 60 perecnt of the continent’s workforce, it only compensates with less than one-seventh of its GDP. This huge gap is enjoyed by the rest of the world as they add value to the raw commodities we export.
This situation is the same in Kenya though this is probably not news to you; Africa’s immature secondary sector has been widely discussed yet it hasn’t translated to a change in this narrative. To understand how we’ll transform our sector and economy, we first need to understand the hurdles we face, how and why they were put in place.
