Inside Kenya’s 3 Million-Tonne Maize Gamble, What It Means For The Price Of Unga

Kenya is heading back to the international grain market again. This time, the numbers are bigger, the stakes are higher, and the question hanging over the whole plan is one Kenyans have asked before: will bringing in more maize actually keep the price of unga in check, or are we just buying time?

The push is coming from the Cereal Millers Association, which wants government approval to import 3 million metric tonnes of white maize, duty-free, over nine months. Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe is weighing the request now.

Millers say they’re worried local supplies are tightening, and if nothing changes, flour prices could climb. To put that number in perspective: it dwarfs the 25 million bags (90kg each) the government said back in August it would help bring in to cover an expected shortfall.

Kenya eats through roughly 75 million bags of maize a year, and this season’s harvest isn’t going to come close.

Kagwe has pointed to poor and unpredictable rainfall in the country’s main growing counties as the reason behind an expected deficit of around 25 million bags. It’s also a reminder of something Kenya keeps relearning the hard way: how exposed the country is when farming depends so heavily on rain.

Kagwe flagged in early September that this season’s output could drop significantly because of the weather hitting key producing regions. Imports, in that context, become less of a choice and more of a necessity, a way to keep millers supplied so flour production doesn’t stall.

The millers pushing for the 3-million-tonne window say they need the runway, time to source maize, arrange financing, and get it transported before local stocks run dangerously low. They’re also asking for room to bring in non-GMO white maize from wherever it’s available, regionally or further afield.

More maize in the country should, in theory, ease the pressure; millers won’t be scrambling and bidding each other up for scarce grain. But theory and the checkout counter are two different things.

What actually determines the price of a packet of unga is the landed cost of that imported maize after transport, insurance, financing, border fees, storage, testing, milling, packaging, energy, and distribution all take their cut.

This gets trickier if a meaningful chunk of the maize comes from landlocked countries. Zambia is on the table as a source, but moving grain from Zambia into Kenya isn’t cheap or fast, and those costs stack up before the maize ever reaches a mill. Cheap grain at the farm gate in Zambia doesn’t mean cheap flour on a Nairobi shelf.

Kagwe himself has acknowledged part of the problem: maize can sit at the border for three to five days, and every extra day adds cost, costs that, eventually, land back on the consumer. He’s been pushing for fixes to border and logistics bottlenecks alongside the import approval itself.

Getting enough maize into the country is only half the job. Making sure it’s safe is the other half, and Kagwe hasn’t been subtle about it. His message to would-be importers has been blunt: don’t bother bringing maize that won’t pass inspection.

That means compliance with Kenya’s sanitary and phytosanitary rules, especially around moisture content and aflatoxin levels, which are non-negotiable in food safety terms.

The tension here is real: moving faster to bring maize in quickly puts pressure on the very testing systems meant to keep bad grain out. Kagwe wants lab testing sped up dramatically from hours or days down to about 10 minutes, plus streamlined, one-stop border processing.

It’s a balancing act. Kenya needs the maize urgently. It just can’t afford to cut corners getting it in.

According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the country imported 468,109 tonnes of unmilled maize in 2025, a 51.4% jump from 309,274 tonnes the year before. That increase happened even as local production had actually improved.

Zoom out further, and the pattern gets clearer. Government figures from the 2026/27 budget process show maize production climbing from 34 million bags in 2022 to 67 million bags in 2025, while imports over that same stretch fell from 9.9 million bags down to 3.3 million.

In other words: when local harvests are strong, Kenya buys less from abroad. When the weather turns, it runs straight back to the import market.

3 million tonnes of imported maize might ease the immediate squeeze, but it doesn’t fix anything underneath it.

It doesn’t grow Kenya’s own production capacity. It doesn’t expand irrigation. It doesn’t improve the seeds farmers plant. It doesn’t cut post-harvest losses. And it certainly doesn’t protect farmers from whatever the next drought brings.

That’s why this is increasingly being framed not as a one-off shortage, but as a structural food security issue. Even Kagwe has acknowledged as much, calling for a shift toward irrigation-based farming so the next dry spell doesn’t hit production quite so hard.

History backs up the concern. KNBS data shows maize output actually fell, from 47.6 million bags in 2023 to 44.7 million in 2024, largely because of erratic short rains. It’s a pattern that keeps repeating.

The yellow maize workaround: the idea is to ease competition between animal feed manufacturers and flour millers, who currently fight over the same white maize supply. If feed producers get dedicated access to yellow maize instead, more white maize stays available for human consumption, flour, essentially.

It’s a smart concept on paper. Whether it actually works depends on how fast alternative supplies show up, and whether feed manufacturers are willing to make the switch away from food-grade white maize.

For most Kenyans, the question that matters isn’t policy; it’s price. Will unga cost more or less? If imports land before local stocks get critically low, they could soften what would otherwise be a sharper price spike.

But the size of the import order alone doesn’t set the final price. Landed cost, exchange rates, transport, border efficiency, financing, milling costs, and competition among millers all factor in. A duty-free window might knock out one layer of cost, but that doesn’t guarantee it translates into a cheaper bag of flour at the shop.

Large-scale duty-free imports help consumers and millers in the short term, but they can undercut the price local farmers get, especially if imported grain floods in right as farmers are trying to sell their own harvest.

That’s the real policy tightrope: keep unga affordable now, without discouraging farmers from planting maize next season. Squeeze farmers too hard with cheap imports, and they may grow less next time. Wait too long to import, and consumers get hit with a price shock instead.

The 3-million-tonne proposal should be read for what it is: a stopgap. It can buy time, keep millers supplied, and reduce the risk of a severe shortage. But it doesn’t touch the underlying problem.

Kenya still needs to grow more maize, more reliably. It needs less dependence on rainfall, better storage, stronger post-harvest handling, more productive farmers, and steadier regional trade in grain. And its food-safety systems need to scale up just as fast as its import volumes do.

The real test isn’t whether this import deal goes through. It’s whether Kenya uses the breathing room it buys or ends up right back here the next time the rains fail.

Read Also : Kenya Turns To Zambia For 540,000 Tones Of Maize As Shortage Deepens