Nairobi: Cabinet secretary (CS) for Agriculture and Livestock Development Mutahi Kagwe has officially unveiled the Kenya AgriConnect Compact (2025-2030), a bold national agricultural transformation initiative engineered to shift the sector from subsistence farming into a modern, high-tech, and commercially viable economic powerhouse.
According to Kenya News Agency, Kagwe highlighted that the Agriconnect Compact positions agriculture not as a subsistence sector, but as a modern, technology-enabled, climate-smart, and investment-ready engine for inclusive economic transformation.
The CS was speaking when he presided over the official opening of the 12th Agritec Africa International Exhibition and Conference, collocated with the 11th Dairy Livestock and Poultry Expo Africa and the 7th GrainTech Africa Expo at KICC in Nairobi.
Underscoring the timeliness of this annual platform, whose theme this year is ‘Improving Farmers’ Incomes Through Innovation and Technology’, CS Kagwe lauded Radeecal communications the organiser, and the 150 private-sector entities from 25 countries present for choosing Nairobi and also turning the expo into one of the largest annual agritech convenings on the continent.
The CS noted that Kenya’s quest for agricultural mechanization is government-enabled and private-sector driven, and is addressing key bottlenecks that have previously hindered uptake, like affordability, appropriateness, after sales service and support.
Notably, at the core of this ambitious strategy, according to Kagwe, is a heavy emphasis on digitalization and technology, which will see the deployment of digital extension services, agritech platforms for market traceability, and advanced processing technologies designed to eliminate crippling post-harvest losses.
To fuel this transition, he announced that the government is committing USD 3.8B in catalytic public funds, strategically structured to de-risk the sector and crowd in a massive USD 7.6B in private sector investment.
‘The Agriconnect Compact is a deliberate, strategic, and urgent framework to align public investment with private sector ambition where public investment finances foundational systems and public goods, reducing risks and creating an enabling environment that attracts large-scale private capital,’ the CS stated as he explained this deliberate synergy.
By leveraging public-private partnerships, blended finance, and credit guarantees, the framework fundamentally changes the risk profile of agricultural lending, turning local value chains, such as dairy, edible oils, and horticulture, into highly attractive, lucrative targets for private capital.
Beyond production, this comprehensive framework prioritizes market systems transformation by upgrading infrastructure, rolling out digital marketplaces, and developing structured trading systems to ensure farmers are no longer exploited by fragmented value chains.
Further, these market reforms are aggressively targeted at slashing costly imports of food staples like rice and maize by 50 percent, while driving a 60 percent surge in high-value exports to global markets. Most importantly, this market-driven growth is directly tied to solving the nation’s employment crisis.
Importantly, the Agriconnect Compact is uniquely engineered to create 2.482M new and upgraded better jobs by 2030, absorbing the youth into dignified roles across agro-processing, logistics, digital supply chains, and agribusiness management.
Highlighting the human impact of this shift, CS Kagwe emphasized, ‘The jobs to be created will be real jobs with dignity. The food security we achieve will mean that no Kenyan goes to bed hungry.’
Backed by strong political will, the National Treasury, the Council of Governors, and international development partners, he assured that the technical groundwork is complete.
‘We have the strategy. We have the investment framework. We have the political will. What we need now is private sector action,’ the CS asserted, reiterating that Kenya is officially moving from strategy to collective action to secure total food sustainability and widespread economic prosperity.
