Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe on Thursday, April 17, met with Iranian business groups to chart a way forward following the Middle Eastern country's ban on Kenyan tea exports.
The meeting was convened to deliberate on lifting the ban that has dealt a blow to Kenya, whose largest export is black tea.
"Reopening access to Iran’s robust market could be a game changer for tea farmers and the entire tea value chain," a statement by Kagwe read.
They also discussed expanding the trade network, not just in Iran but also in the larger Middle Eastern and Central Asian regions.
The Ambassador of Kenya to the UAE, Kenneth Milimo Nganga; the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) Chairman, Chege Kirundi; and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Wilson Muthaura, accompanied the CS.
In 2023, Kenyan tea was embroiled in a Ksh542 billion graft scandal in Iran, with President Ebrahim Raisi distancing his administration from the scandal.
According to a report by Iran International, December 2023, one tea firm was at the centre of the entire scandal involving senior current and former government officials, including ministers of agriculture and industry and the governors of the Central Bank of Iran and the chiefs of Iranian Customs Administration.
The investigation revealed that until 2020, the annual budget allocated for importing tea was around $300 million (Ksh39 billion in current exchange rates), but the budget tripled to approximately $900 million (Ksh116 billion in current exchange rates) without proper justification.
The scandal rocked the trade relations between the two nations, and the subsequent ban hit the Kenyan economy hard, as just a few months before, President William Ruto had announced that tea exports to Iran had increased eightfold in just three months.
On July 12, 2023, during a meeting with President Raisi, President Ruto noted that the tea worth $28.4 million (Ksh3.7 billion in current exchange rates) was exported in just the first quarter of the year to Iran.
"I sought the President's commitment to exporting more tea, meat and other agricultural products to Iran, and through Iran to the Central Asian countries," he stated.
"Trade volume between our countries has been on a steady upward trajectory. Kenya exported tea worth $28.4 million (Ksh3.7 billion in current exchange rate) to Tehran in the first quarter of this year, which is an eight-fold increase."
