Kenya is facing a severe shortage of raw sugar that is disrupting the production of industrial sugar used in key sectors such as pharmaceuticals, food processing, and alcohol manufacturing.
On Thursday, August 28, 2025, Cabinet Secretary for Investment and Industry Lee Kinyanjui toured Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries in Kisumu, where he highlighted the urgency of the situation.
“We don’t have enough raw sugar to process industrial sugar,” he said.
Adding;
“Industrial sugar is processed for use in the pharmaceutical industry, in the food industry, in the alcoholic industry, and all that. So as a result of that, we have to import industrial sugar because we don’t have enough raw sugar.”
The government is now planning to import raw sugar to prevent factories from shutting down. Kinyanjui explained that the imports would be limited and targeted at keeping operations running in factories that have struggled for years.
“We’ll be looking into how we can allow part importation of that raw sugar so that we can have some of the factories, including where we are today, where there’s an investment of over two billion for a factory that has not worked since 2016,” he said.
At the same time, the Cabinet Secretary emphasised that boosting local farming remains the long-term solution. He urged farmers and county governments to step up sugarcane production, warning that many factories could collapse if the supply is not restored.
“We currently have a serious shortage of cane needed to sustain our sugar factories. There are vast tracts of idle land that could be put to use, and we are challenging both farmers and county governments to return to active farming, especially now that we have restarted milling operations in various factories,” the CS stated.
Kibos Sugar is preparing to roll out its industrial-grade sugar line. The firm is licensed to produce 30,000 tonnes a year and has capacity for up to 150,000 tonnes annually, but the shortage of cane has left production far below potential.
During the visit, Kinyanjui also addressed concerns about the loss of farmland to real estate projects. He cautioned that unchecked horizontal expansion was undermining agricultural productivity.
“To protect our agricultural productivity, we need to move toward vertical development through the government’s affordable housing programme, instead of horizontal expansion that eats into farmland,” he said.
Kenya’s sugar sector has been under strain for years. Production for the 2025/26 season is projected to drop by nearly 20 per cent, from 810,000 tonnes to 650,000 tonnes.
At the same time, demand is expected to grow to 1.25 million tonnes, leaving an even bigger gap between supply and consumption. Imports are therefore likely to rise sharply, with estimates showing the country could bring in around 600,000 tonnes this year alone.
Earlier in 2025, the government temporarily shut down sugar mills in Western Kenya for three months to allow cane to mature.
A four per cent Sugar Development Levy has also been introduced on both locally produced and imported sugar to support cane development, improve infrastructure in sugar-growing areas, modernise factories, and provide funding for farmers. The government has set 2027 as the target year to end sugar imports completely and make the country self-sufficient.
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