Workers sort coffee beans at a coffee estate in Ruiru, a suburb on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, on June 3, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

 

A worker pours coffee beans to a cleaning station at a coffee estate in Ruiru, a suburb on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, on June 3, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

 
Kenya plans to promote domestic coffee consumption in order to reduce reliance on foreign markets, a government official said on Friday.

Lawrence Omuhaka, chief administrative secretary with Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Co-operatives, told journalists that out of the 45,000 metric tons produced annually in Kenya, only three percent is consumed locally while the remainder is mostly exported as a raw commodity to international markets.

"Kenya will promote a coffee drinking culture so that there is a growth of consumption of local produce from the current three percent to seven percent by the end of the year 2025," Omuhaka said during the launch of Kenyatta University coffee house in Kiambu county that was funded by International Coffee Organization (ICO) through the Inter-African Coffee Organization (IACO).

Omuhaka said that the east African nation has a very low figure for domestic coffee consumption as compared to other coffee producing countries.

He revealed that comparatively, other coffee growing countries such as Ethiopia, Brazil, Columbia and Guatemala consume much of their national production in any given year and this helps in employment creation and stabilization of the volatile global coffee price fluctuations.

The ministry of agriculture is also keen to reverse the slow growth of the lucrative domestic market for Kenyan coffee by promoting locally manufacturing of coffee making equipment through fabrication and patenting of coffee making machines.