Nairobi: Agriculture Cabinet Secretary (CS) Mutahi Kagwe has called on African nations to confront the unfair global practice of tariff escalation, where developed markets allow raw agricultural commodities to enter at low or zero duty but impose significantly higher tariffs once they are processed. He emphasized that this practice has discouraged industrialisation across Africa for decades, limiting farmers to exporting cheap raw materials while jobs, wealth, and manufacturing opportunities are created abroad.
According to Kenya News Agency, Kagwe made these comments during the World Food Prize Foundation’s DialogueNext Forum held in Nairobi. He highlighted Kenya’s ban on raw in-shell macadamia exports as a positive example for the continent, advocating for a similar approach in the coffee and tea sectors to ensure processing, branding, and packaging occur within Africa. Kagwe stressed that local value addition is crucial for creating jobs, increasing farmers’ incomes, and strengthening rural economies.
Kagwe also criticized policies that tax agro-processing machinery while governments claim to support agricultural transformation, arguing that such contradictions deter investment. He called for tailored financing models that accommodate farming cycles through flexible repayments, affordable long-term credit, and weather-indexed insurance. He maintained that reforming global trade rules, expanding local value addition, and improving agricultural financing are essential to making farming more profitable and competitive.
Mashal Husain, President of the World Food Prize Foundation, noted the significance of hosting the conference in Africa, four decades after Dr. Norman Borlaug’s impactful visit to the continent. Husain emphasized the urgency of supporting Africa’s agri-food innovations to feed a rapidly growing and urban population amid intensifying climate risks.
The forum in Nairobi comes at a crucial time, with El Ni±o developing and expected to impact the continent’s food systems significantly. Akinwumi Adesina, 2017 World Food Prize Laureate, remarked on the necessity of hosting the dialogue in Africa, emphasizing the continent’s dynamic agricultural systems and resilient farmers. He noted that the insights from Nairobi would help shape the global agenda, addressing real challenges with solutions increasingly developed by African scientists, farmers, and entrepreneurs.
