Contents

• Background
• Cooperative Marketing in Kenya
• Market Characteristics
• Impact of Marketing Liberalization
• General marketing system in Kenya
• The Formal Marketing Subsystems Prior to Marketing Liberalization in 1992
• The Informal Marketing Subsystem Prior to and After Marketing Liberalization in 1992
• Summary and conclusions

Description

This paper has reviewed agricultural marketing and the dairy marketing system in Kenya, before and after the government started to implement marketing reforms in the country.
The decision by the government (GOK) to relax licensing procedures and bureaucracy has made it relatively easy for anyone interested in engaging in agricultural processing and distribution business to get a license to undertake such business. Hence the immediate impact of marketing liberalization in Kenya's agricultural industry has been intensified market competition among the existing government firms, especially the umbrella marketing bodies and the other cooperative and businesses. A number of new processors have entered the market, and this has undoubtedly caused some changes in the market shares. However, the government has maintained a regulatory role in licensing and .Intensified market competition also appears to have resulted in relatively stable milk producer and consumer prices since 1992, but no detailed studies to investigate this aspect have been undertaken. Time now appears to be ripe for studies to document the patterns of actual changes in prices of milk and milk products and market shares among the major players in Kenya's dairy industry since the "Wind of Change" in the name of marketing liberalization began to sweep across the industry in May 1992.