NSE-Listed AMAC Signs Dubai Deal to Onboard 1,500 Global Buyers onto New EAC Commodities Exchange

The announcement that NSE-listed AMAC, formerly Kenya Orchards, has inked a deal at Gulfoods Dubai to onboard over 1,500 global buyers onto a new commodities exchange for Kenya and the wider EAC is not just another corporate headline. It is a quiet but profound indictment of how markets actually work, and why serious trade infrastructure only succeeds when it is built and run by the private sector.

At its core, a commodities exchange is not a warehouse, a press release, or a political project. It is a living market system. It requires trust, liquidity, speed, price discovery, contract enforcement, data integrity, and relentless responsiveness to buyers and sellers spread across time zones. These are not bureaucratic skills. They are commercial instincts.

AMAC’s move is powerful precisely because it did not begin with speeches or taskforces. It began with buyers. Over 1,500 of them. That is where real exchanges start: with demand, not declarations. By anchoring the platform around actual global buyers, the exchange reverses Kenya’s long-standing mistake of building state-led structures first and hoping markets will magically follow.

Kenya has tried the government-led route many times, and it has failed just as consistently. From collapsed agricultural marketing boards to underutilized trading platforms, state-driven commodity initiatives have been plagued by the same diseases: political interference, slow decision-making, weak incentives, rent-seeking, and total detachment from global market realities. Prices get distorted. Payments delay. Confidence evaporates. Buyers leave.

Governments are structurally incapable of running efficient exchanges because they do not bear commercial risk. When a private firm gets pricing wrong, liquidity dries up and the business dies. When government gets it wrong, the taxpayer absorbs the loss, reports are written, and the cycle quietly repeats. Markets punish inefficiency. Politics protects it.

A commodities exchange must move at the speed of trade, not the pace of procurement. It must negotiate contracts, manage counterparty risk, enforce standards, and resolve disputes without waiting for cabinet memos or parliamentary committees. This is why globally successful exchanges—from Chicago to London to Dubai—are market-driven institutions, even when they operate under public regulation.

AMAC’s Dubai deal matters because it aligns Kenya’s export ambition with how the world actually trades. Global buyers do not wait for ministries to organize themselves. They want reliability, transparency, and volume. They want to know that contracts will be honored, data will be accurate, and disputes will be resolved without politics creeping in. Only private operators, disciplined by profit and loss, can offer that credibility.

For Kenyan and EAC exporters, this model is transformative. It reduces middlemen, improves price discovery, shortens payment cycles, and integrates local producers directly into global demand chains. It turns agriculture from a policy talking point into a structured commercial pipeline. That is how value is unlocked—not through subsidies and slogans, but through functioning markets.

The deeper lesson is uncomfortable but necessary: the role of government is not to run exchanges, mills, or markets. It is to regulate, supervise, and enforce rules fairly. When the state tries to trade, it crowds out competence. When it focuses on regulation, it creates space for capital, innovation, and accountability to flourish.

AMAC’s initiative should therefore be read as more than a corporate milestone. It is proof that Kenya’s economic breakthroughs will not come from reviving old state models under new names. They will come from disciplined private capital building institutions that work, scale, and survive without political life support.

If Kenya truly wants to be a serious exporter, it must finally accept this truth: markets are built by traders, not ministers. And exchanges succeed not because they are announced, but because buyers show up.

Read Also: From Kenya Orchards to AMAC: A Bold Transformation And A New Strategic Acquisition