SAM’S SENSE: The ritual of maize importation

On my Sense tonight, I try to make sense of a growing demand for maize importation.

Just today, the Principal Secretary for the State Department for Livestock, Jonathan Mueke, announced plans by the government to open a duty-free window for the importation of yellow maize as part of strategic interventions to address a gap in animal feeds. He put a figure to it: 500,000 tonnes of yellow maize.

Now, two weeks ago, Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe gazetted a duty-free window to import white maize, of up to 25 million bags. Kagwe explained that the country’s annual demand had risen to 75 million bags and, given the current season’s situation, we were going to face a shortage in the national harvest.

You see, PS Mueke’s declaration that up to 5.5 million 90-kilogram bags of yellow maize will be imported is not backed by any publicly demonstrated evidence of a corresponding shortage.

The government’s own justification has been that animal-feed manufacturers are competing with millers for limited white-maize stocks. But that is not the same thing as demonstrating that the country faces a deficit requiring 5.5 million bags of imports.

When asked, the PS explained that the details are still being worked on. Maybe they are, but then, how did the ministry arrive at a figure of 5.5 million bags?

Back to the white maize for human consumption. You see, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics has consistently reported the national maize harvest to be at an average of 45 million bags, with a rare high of 47.6 million bags in the year 2023.

But then, CS Kagwe estimates that production for 2026 will fall to 50 million bags. That would still be higher than last year’s production.

Still, even when production fell to 44.8 million bags in 2024, the country imported the lowest number of bags at 3.4 million, without needing an import duty suspension.

For the last three years, meaning 2023, 2024 and 2025, we have imported an average of 4.7 million 90-kilogram bags of maize to bridge that same national demand.

Let me present a hypothesis.

You see, over the last ten years, there is a pattern of maize importation in every election year.

In the year 2017, for instance, the country imported over 14.7 million bags of duty-free maize. Why? Because, at the time, the government reported a national drought and crop failure. Maize flour prices spiked, creating a demand for cheaper imports.

And when the imports arrived, the government came up with a strategy to subsidise the maize further for millers, and in exchange, the millers were to brand the unga packets with the Government of Kenya label. And the two-kilogram packets retailed at 90 shillings.

Five years later, in 2022, a similar predicament was facing the country. Maize prices were unstable. The cost of unga was becoming a campaign issue.

Solution? A window to import duty-free maize was opened. And a maize subsidy was infused into the national budget.

And in that year, the country’s maize import demand rose to 8.8 million bags, up from just over 5 million bags the previous year.

And now? There is a window to import 25 million bags of white maize, and another 5.5 million bags of yellow maize.

As you think about it, a few questions to add:

What is the justification for the record-high numbers?

Who are the pre-qualified importers and, if none exist, who are the potential importers?

Given that the country will lose revenue by forfeiting the import tax, how will the benefit be passed on to consumers?

What is the sense of adopting policy decisions with such serious ramifications for the domestic market before working out the reasoning or the details?

What if the country ends up with an imported glut? What happens to the domestic maize growers?

Yet, I am reminded that once upon a time, there was a Goldenberg export compensation deal that saw payouts worth billions of shillings in the early 1990s.

It later occurred that some money was needed to finance a big election campaign — in fact, the first multiparty election for the country.

But maybe there is no sense in overthinking.