Farmers want livestock Kenyan marketing firms privatised

Players in agriculture sector want East African governments to privatise all state corporations dealing with production, processing and marketing of livestock and livestock products.

The stakeholders under the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF), argue that the governments ought to reduce their influence by only undertaking the regulation role and allow the private sector to assume the other value chain activities.

During a two-day workshop at a Nairobi hotel to discuss a new livestock policy, they claimed that government institutions that deals with livestock and livestock products have not been performing as per their potential thus diluting efforts to fight economic imbalances in the region.

Addressing the delegates drawn from the five East African Community (EAC) countries yesterday, EAFF President Philip Kiriro pointed out that livestock can attract high growth rate especially if the private sector is given more room to operate and governments only regulate the sector.

"Our priority targets by 2030 is to raise annual growth rate in livestock production by over 5 per cent and we believe this will help supplement efforts by EAC partner states realise their 10 per cent economic growth target," he said.

Kiriro pointed out that under the new EAC livestock policy, stakeholders will advocate for the governments to reduce their influence in the organisations dealing with livestock and thus create more investment openings.

In Kenya, EAFF directors said privatisation of New KCC and Kenya Meat Commission is long overdue, saying if the Government offloads its shareholding stake, the institutions will register complete growth and thus enable farmers to earn more income.

Co-operative Alliance of Kenya Chief Executive Daniel Marube said since the revival of the firm, the Government has earned enough dividends and thus ought to release it to the farmers.