Coffee Politics and Its Impact In Kenya from 1895 to 2010

Coffee is produced mostly in the poor rural areas of the developing world to satisfy the taste buds of people mainly in the developed nations. This thesis traces the link between producers and consumers and the intricate politics of liberalization that has affected the coffee sector i n Kenya. The coffee trading regime can be divided into two time frames: the period before International Coffee Agreements (ICA), and the period after ICA. Domestically, coffee trading in Kenya was marked by the enactment of the Coffee Act, 200I (Liberalization and restructuring of the coffee industry). These critical happenstances reveal the changes in the coffee industry, its genesis and its future prospects. Kenya's attempt to liberalize the coffee sector, though incomplete. has been to safeguard the financial leakages in the local coffee chain. The study finds that liberalization in Kenya's coffee industry has failed to address the core questions of quality and quantity in product ion. As a result Kenya's value share in the global coffee chain has not increased.