OPINION: The coffee Kenya grows but cannot afford to keep

There are a few bags of Kenyan coffee in my suitcase. Roasted in Kenya, branded in Kenya, grown on an estate a short drive from Nairobi. A restaurant in London wants to taste them. It is a small shipment. It is also, in miniature, the answer to a question Kenya has been dodging for a hundred years.

Almost all of that coffee still leaves Kenya as raw green beans. The world is paying us more than ever for our harvest. Yet we sell it the way our grandfathers did. Beans in a sack. Onto a ship. Gone.

Where does the rest of the money go? Follow the supply chain. A farmer earns perhaps Ksh.150 for a kilo of cherry. It takes six or seven kilos of cherry to make one kilo of the roasted coffee in my suitcase. Call it Ksh.1,000 of cherry in every finished kilo. In London this week that kilo sells for up to Ksh.8,000 in a branded bag. His hands. My suitcase. Their shelf. The farmer takes a fraction. The rest of the value is added after export.

Nobody stole that margin. It was earned, step by step, just not by us. Someone roasted the coffee. Someone designed the bag. Someone gave it a name and put it on a shelf where a Londoner would happily pay for it. Nearly every one of those steps happens abroad. Some of those bags even carry the names of our own hills, coffee sold proudly abroad as Othaya, at prices no one in Othaya will ever see.

We grow the story. Others get paid for telling it. We know this pattern because we live it everywhere. We export raw tea to buy back tea bags. We export hides to buy back shoes. We sell the harvest cheap. We buy back the finished product at a premium. Coffee stings the most because the world already knows our name. Kenyan coffee is a global brand. Kenya does not own it.

The recent reforms have done real good. They all fight for a fairer price for the green bean. Open auctions. Direct sales. Faster pay for farmers. These are all necessary. Yet they remain a fight over a raw material. The bigger prize sits untouched. The roasting. The bag. The brand. The shelf.

We are heading into an election year. Coffee will feature at every rally in the growing counties. Here is a simple test for every promise. Does it fight for a better price for the raw bean? Or does it fight for Kenya to own the roast, the brand and the shelf? The first puts money in the farmer's pocket this season. The second changes what his grandchildren inherit.