Nairobi, Jan. 7 -- When the Agriculture Cabinet Secretary (CS), Peter Munya, recently embarked on reforming the tea sector, his was seen as an effort to sustain the tea growers. But these efforts risk excluding the 420,000 small-scale tea growers (SSTGs) in the country and might not address their sustainability in the long run.
Even though the CS is responding to the complaints from small tea growers that they are being exploited by the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA), the problem seems to be bigger than just the deprivation.
Although the problems are defined variously, the overriding one is corruption. There is also the manipulation of SSTGs' collective voice through differentiated payment. Considering that most SSTGs are unaware of ...