Kenya: If Kenya’s tea sector is to continue being one of the country’s biggest foreign exchange earners, more women will need to be involved in decision-making, a recently released report has found.
The report by the ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries and the Food and Agriculture Organisation found that women do most of the work on tea plantations but receive a small share of the income from sales and have little say on how it is spent.
Low representation
Further, though small-scale tea farmers produce about 60 per cent of the country’s output, they have few women representatives in their management authority, the Kenya Tea Development Agency.
The KTDA website shows its board comprises 15 members, none of whom are women.
And after the tea agency’s polls, which were concluded earlier this month, only two of the 109 factory directors elected were women — Ms Rachel Nyaboe Orina of Nyansiongo Tea Factory, and Ms Hellen Wangari of Kapsara Factory.
When it comes to tea factory unit managers, men are once again dominant, with only two of the 54 factories in the country managed by women.
Nyansiongo Tea Factory, which has Ms Orina as a director, is managed by Ms Pauline Oyugi. The other female manager is Ms Virginia Chege of Gitugi Tea Factory, which had Ms Dorcas Muhoro serving as director before her recent resignation.
By the time of going to press, KTDA had not responded to our requests for comment.
Tea is the world’s second-most consumed beverage — after water — so it holds special significance in the country’s development plans.
But a report published in the Journal of Management and Sustainability warns that the sector is likely to face future challenges if women’s participation is not actively supported.
“At a time when women’s rights are regarded as a criteria for trade, their violation might lead to denied entry of Kenyan tea in some export markets,” it says.
The challenges
It identifies the marginalisation of women in the sharing out of tea income as one of the country’s key challenges.
“Women customarily specialise in the production of food crops (maize, bananas, beans), while men focus on commercial crops like tea and coffee, with matters made worse by women not owning land,” it adds.
Other studies have shown that sidelining women affects smallholder tea production negatively and leads to low productivity and neglected tea fields.
Because of their diminished position, women are less likely to benefit from technical training and extension programmes.
Yet, researchers have found that women tend to produce better-quality tea due to their greater diligence, attention to quality controls and willingness to invest in the long-term interests of their families.
The asymmetrical representation in the sector has also hindered the growth in number of smallholder farmers.
Already, the tea sector is struggling with ageing farmers, with the youth preferring white-collar jobs to working on farms, putting future production at risk. A failure to incentivise the youth by sharing out income has been cited as one of the reasons curtailing their participation.
Ailing sector
Further, the crop’s cash appeal is slowly dimming, with farmers asked to brace for lower bonuses this year after tea prices dropped between June and December.
“The prices are slowly stabilising, but this may not cater for the drop the sector experienced last year,” KTDA Chairman Peter Kanyago warned.
The decline in prices was caused by increased production and supply following last year’s good weather, but this dragged prices down nearly 30 per cent.
By Winsley Masese, The Standard
