Kenya is losing millions of tonnes of food every year even as millions of people struggle to access enough nutritious food, exposing a costly gap between what the country produces and what reaches consumers.
About nine million tonnes of food produced along Kenya’s supply chains are estimated to be lost or wasted annually, representing an economic loss of about Sh72 billion, according to new evidence.
The volume is equivalent to roughly 1.8 million five-tonne trucks, illustrating the scale of resources embedded in food that never reaches the consumer.
This is according to the NutriSave programme implemented by Techno Serve, a global non-profit organisation that uses business solutions to help people lift themselves out of poverty.
The programme is funded the Gates Foundation and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), which has spent three years examining how Kenya can reduce food loss while increasing access to affordable and nutritious fruits and vegetables.
Its latest evidence suggests the solution may not simply be producing more food.
Instead, greater attention needs to be paid to what happens between the farm, markets, retailers and consumers , and to whether businesses have the finance, technology, information and market incentives required to keep nutritious food from being lost.
“Informal food vendors were central to achieving NutriSave’s dual objectives of reducing food loss and waste while improving access to nutritious food for low-income consumers. We need to invest more in their agency if we are to achieve meaningful food system transformation in Kenya,” said TechnoServe acting country director for Kenya, Sebastian Oggema.
The evidence comes against a striking nutritional backdrop.
TechnoServe estimates that up to 30 to 40 per cent of food produced in Kenya is lost or wasted before reaching the final consumer.
At the same time, nearly a third of the population is food insecure, while only about two per cent of the population consumes recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables.
This creates what the researchers describe as a systemic paradox: food is being lost along the supply chain while nutritional deficits persist.
The losses also represent wasted water, land, energy, fertiliser and labour, while rotting food contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.
For farmers and businesses, the losses translate into reduced incomes and lost economic value.
The NutriSave research focused particularly on tomatoes, mangoes and indigenous leafy green vegetables, commodities that are important sources of nutrition but highly perishable.
Research by Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), alongside other NutriSave partners, examined the causes of food loss and potential interventions across these value chains.
The research found that losses begin long before produce reaches the market.
For tomatoes, poor-quality seeds, unsuitable varieties, pests and diseases contribute to losses before harvest.
Late harvesting, physical damage during picking, rough handling, overfilled containers, poor sorting and inadequate washing add to the problem.
Transport delays, poor roads and limited cold storage also contribute to losses, according to research findings, while seasonal gluts and consumer rejection of damaged produce compound the problem at markets.
Mangoes face similar pressures, but seasonal production creates an additional challenge.
Fruit flies and diseases, inappropriate harvesting maturity and poor picking techniques contribute to losses.
“Inadequate packaging, compression, poor sorting and grading, transport delays and insufficient cold-storage infrastructure further undermine the value chain,” the survey report indicates.
During peak seasons, limited processing capacity means that edible fruit can be rejected or left without a market.
Indigenous leafy vegetables face their own challenges, including poor access to improved varieties, unfavourable weather, lack of pre-cooling and refrigerated storage, rough handling, poor packaging and inadequate transport.
Poor market sanitation and limited processing capacity add to losses.
Simple interventions such as harvesting produce at the right maturity, using appropriate tools, improving handling and sorting, adopting better packaging and providing shade and ventilation could significantly improve quality retention, according to findings.
The JKUAT research estimates that improved harvesting practices could result in 15 to 20 per cent quality retention, while better handling and sorting could deliver 10 to 15 per cent.
Improved packaging, including reusable plastic crates, could contribute 20 to 25 per cent, while storage and preservation interventions could achieve 15 to 30 per cent quality retention.
“At the next level are technologies such as evaporative cooling and cold-chain systems, together with processing options that turn surplus or imperfect produce into juices, purees and powders,” experts say.
The business case, however, depends on whether these interventions can generate sufficient returns.
Research involving 12 Kenyan food-loss solution providers found that even businesses that had successfully established commercially viable operations faced difficulties obtaining enough raw materials.
A survey covering 1,281 Kenyan households and 176 retailers found that consumers generally preferred fresh produce to the processed mango juice, tomato paste and cereal flour containing indigenous leafy vegetables examined in the study.
For mango juice, 37 per cent of respondents who found the product unacceptable cited added chemicals. The findings point towards demand for minimally processed products with clean labels.
Yet there is also evidence of substantial potential demand.
The consumer demand index for mango juice averaged 0.61, compared with 0.53 for tomato paste and 0.52 for cereal flour containing indigenous leafy greens, indicating medium-to-high demand.
Retailers were responding to that demand. Eighty-four per cent stocked mango juice, 79 per cent stocked tomato paste and 29 per cent stocked cereal flour containing indigenous leafy vegetables.
Mango juice accounted for half of reported purchases of the three processed products, followed by tomato paste at 39 per cent and the leafy-green flour at 11 per cent.
The research also found that packaging and affordability matter.Seventy per cent of mango juice was consumed in small packs, while 82 per cent of tomato paste was consumed in small packs.
This suggests that product design and pack sizes can determine whether nutritious processed food fits into household purchasing patterns.
Fresh produce remains central to diets where tomatoes were the most frequently consumed fresh produce, with 75 per cent of consumers reporting daily consumption.
Indigenous leafy vegetables were consumed daily by 47 per cent, while 36 per cent consumed mangoes two to six times a week.
The challenge, therefore, is to build systems that preserve this nutritional value while reducing the losses that occur between production and consumption.
According to Washington-based agribusiness and food systems specialist who works with TechnoServe, Richard Pluke, reducing food loss is an important measure of whether a food system is becoming regenerative.
“Reducing food loss and waste is one of the clearest indicators that a food system is truly regenerative,” he said.
The NutriSave programme has also tested approaches including working with Kenyan fresh fruits and vegetables as well as FMCG company, Six Square Limited, to redirect surplus and cosmetically imperfect produce into minimally processed ready-to-cook products.
It also partnered with Baba Mboga, a grocery delivery platform supplying fresh produce and prepared vegetables to consumers and informal vendors.
The wider business opportunity could, it notes, include cold-chain providers, local aggregation networks, processors, distributors and urban food-supply businesses.
But the evidence cautions against assuming that every intervention will be commercially viable.
The TechnoServe business-case presentation identifies five broad areas for action which are infrastructure and logistics, technology and finance, coordination and market access, knowledge and capacity; and policy and institutions.
This includes improving rural-urban connectivity, developing affordable cold chains, deploying appropriate post-harvest technologies, improving access to finance and strengthening collaboration between producers and markets.
It also calls for standardised measurement of food loss and stronger institutional support.
On nutritious foods, the business case depends on stimulating demand through nutrition education and behavioural change while lowering economic barriers to healthier choices while for Kenya, it means tackling food loss not merely as an agricultural problem but as an economic, nutritional and business challenge.
