President William Ruto’s idea of bringing in buffaloes to ease Kenya’s milk shortage could take years to deliver any milk. Shoppers need relief now. The fastest fixes available are rain, imports from Uganda and getting more milk from the cows Kenya already has.
Speaking at the Agriculture and Food Security Summit at Jamhuri Park in Nairobi on 9 October, Ruto said the government should look at importing better camel breeds and introducing buffaloes for milk. He suggested starting buffalo farming on a small scale to test whether the animals could be milked successfully in Kenya. “Buffaloes produce a lot of milk,” he said.
The proposal comes in the third month of a supply squeeze that has thinned supermarket shelves and raised prices. In Nyeri, one milk bar raised its price per litre from Sh65 to Sh70, roughly eight per cent, and major packaged brands at one supermarket rose by about 10 shillings. Elsewhere, consumers have paid three to five shillings more for a 500ml packet.
How big is the gap?
Official data show a sharp but modest dip rather than a collapse. Formal deliveries to processors fell 3.7 per cent, from 84.4 million litres in June to 81.3 million litres in July. Pasteurised milk has been hit hardest, while long-life milk has stayed easier to find.
The deeper problem is structural. The Kenya Dairy Board (KDB) puts annual demand at eight billion litres against production of 5.76 billion. Other official estimates put output closer to 5.5 billion litres, but either way the country falls short of its own consumption by more than two billion litres a year.
Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has blamed dry weather that cut pasture and raised feed costs, and ruled out foot-and-mouth disease. He has also pointed to brokers who outbid cooperatives and divert milk away from processing plants, and the government has allowed duty-free imports of yellow maize to cut feed costs. The Consumers Federation of Kenya (COFEK) has said the shortage was foreseeable and could have been better managed.
The buffalo question
The animal Ruto has in mind is not the wild African buffalo but the domestic water buffalo, a separate species. India and Pakistan lead the world in buffalo milk output, and in both countries buffaloes produce more milk than cattle.
Yields are respectable rather than dramatic. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), dairy river buffaloes produce 1,500 to 4,500 litres per lactation depending on breed and conditions. Their milk carries about twice the fat of cow’s milk, which suits butter and cheese making. Before any herd arrives, Kenya would need to choose breeds, cost the imports, estimate yields and test whether farmers and processors can build a market for the milk.
None of that eases this season’s shortage. Importing animals, building herds and creating a buyer base is a multi-year project, and Ruto himself framed it as a pilot.
Camels: a strength already in hand
Camels are a different case. Kenya already ranks among the top camel milk producers in the world; a peer-reviewed review lists it first, ahead of Somalia, though other estimates place Somalia first. Kenyan camel breeds yield between 1,000 and 3,500 litres over a lactation of up to 18 months.
The weak link is not the animals. The same review found that processing and marketing of camel milk products in Kenya remain very limited. Most camel milk stays in the arid north, far from the Nairobi shelves where the shortage is most visible. Ruto backed a call by camel farmer Mohamed Hassan for a structured plan for the industry. Better breeds would help, but cooling, collection and processing would likely matter more.
The faster fixes
Uganda is already filling part of the gap. Trade Cabinet Secretary Lee Kinyanjui confirmed on 5 September that Kenya was importing milk from its neighbour because it could not meet domestic demand. Uganda now produces about 5.4 billion litres a year, roughly level with Kenya, after years in which Ugandan exporters complained of permit delays and levies at the Kenyan border.
Within Kenya, the head of the Kenya Dairy Processors Association has argued that the country already has enough cows. Average output stays low, he said, because farms do not track feed costs, growth, conception and daily yield. KDB has said it is distributing milk coolers and subsidised sexed semen to raise herd quality.
The weather may do the most in the short term. The official October to December outlook projects above-average rain across most of the main dairy counties, including Kiambu, Nakuru, Nyeri, Uasin Gishu and Nandi.
