| dc.description.abstract | In Kenya, agriculture contributes about 25 percent of gross domestic product
(GDP) and provides a livelihood to three-quarters of the population. Food
production plays an important part in maintaining the country’s food security,
while the industrial and horticultural crops subsectors are important foreign
exchange earners. However, the country’s agricultural potential is still
unrealised and its growth targets are not being met. Opportunities to add
value to agricultural produce are largely unexploited. This, coupled with high
production costs arising from escalating energy prices and poor infrastructure,
makes Kenyan agricultural exports less competitive in global markets.
Kenya Vision 2030 identifies agriculture as a key sector through which
annual economic growth rates of 10 percent can be achieved. Under the
Vision, smallholder agriculture will be transformed from subsistence
activities, marked by low productivity and value addition, to ‘an innovative,
commercially-oriented, internationally competitive and modern agricultural
sector’. One of the key drivers for this transformation is agribusiness, which is defined
as including all businesses involved in agricultural production, including
farming and contract farming, seed supply, agrichemicals, farm machinery,
wholesale and distribution, processing, marketing and retail sales.
The Kenya National Agribusiness Strategy has been developed by a National
Agribusiness Task Force. This is made up of private agribusiness practitioners
and the public sector, and supported by the Agricultural Sector Coordination
Unit (ASCU). The strategy’s vision is to bring about a highly productive and efficient
agribusiness sector, competitive both locally and internationally. It will help
the agricultural sector move from a focus on subsistence to a focus on meeting
market and commercial demands... | en_US |
