Kagwe pushes tech adoption as climate threats loom over Kenya's farming sector

Kenya's agriculture sits at a crossroads. The weather has become unreliable—droughts arrive without warning, floods follow—and the soil beneath farmers' feet is losing its fertility. The costs are staggering. Climate variability alone drains the national economy of roughly 2.8 percent of its annual GDP through crop failures, dead livestock, and markets that simply stop functioning. Against this backdrop, Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe made a direct argument this week: farmers cannot survive the next decade by doing what they have always done. They need technology, and they need it now.

Kagwe delivered this message on Thursday while opening the 125th Nairobi International Trade Fair at Jamhuri Park, an annual gathering that has become a window into how Kenya's agricultural sector is trying to reinvent itself. The seven-day event, running through October 4 under the banner "Promoting Climate-Smart Agriculture and Trade Initiatives for Sustainable Economic Growth," brought together farmers, livestock keepers, agribusinesses, researchers, and technology firms to display what the future might look like: artificial intelligence systems that guide planting decisions, drones that survey fields, irrigation equipment designed for water scarcity, climate-resilient crop varieties, and animal-health technologies that can be deployed across vast distances.

The Cabinet Secretary's vision extends beyond simply buying new tools. Technology, in his framing, should answer the fundamental questions that have always confronted farmers—what to plant, where to plant it, which inputs to use, when to plant, and where to sell the harvest. Climate change has made these questions harder. The old patterns no longer hold. Digital systems, he argued, could help farmers anticipate shocks rather than merely react to them, absorb losses when they come, adapt their practices, and recover faster.

The government has already begun building the infrastructure to make this possible. The Kenya Agricultural and Digital Information Centre, or KADEC, is participating in the trade fair for the first time as a central repository for agricultural data and technology. More concretely, about 8.9 million farmers have been registered under the Kenya Integrated Agricultural Management Information System and the Animal Identification and Traceability System, known as ANITRAC. These registrations make it possible to target services—vaccinations, extension advice, financial products—with precision rather than scattering them across the countryside.

Soil health emerged as a particular focus. Kagwe noted that 63 percent of Kenya's soils are acidic, a condition that wastes fertilizer and money when farmers apply inputs without first testing what their land actually needs. The government has launched the National Digital Soil Works Project, which consolidates laboratories under the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation to support soil testing and management. Automated soil testing, aerial surveying, and geospatial mapping are meant to make this information accessible to farmers who might otherwise have no way to know what their soil requires.

Livestock presented its own set of challenges. Recent milk shortages tied to dry conditions have exposed the fragility of pastoral systems that depend on year-round feed availability. The government is investing in animal health, improved breeding, dairy productivity, and market access while strengthening meat value chains. The fair showcased improved breeds, feeds, breeding technologies, and animal-health products designed to help farmers maintain production during the lean seasons that climate variability now makes routine.

Batram Muthoka, the chief executive of the Agricultural Society of Kenya, which organizes the trade fair, framed the event as a response to shifting farmer needs. "We are picking initiatives that help the farmer and the entrepreneur to mitigate the challenges that come with climate change," he said. The fair has evolved from a place where farmers simply looked at new equipment into a platform where they could interact with technologies, innovations, and businesses that might actually improve their enterprises.

Kagwe's closing argument returned to the question of who bears responsibility for Kenya's agricultural future. "It will not be determined by the government alone," he said. "It will be determined by the strength of the partnerships we build between farmers and government, research and industry, innovators and investors, and national and county governments." The trade fair itself was framed as a place where those partnerships could take root—where exhibitors, farmers, investors, and other stakeholders could form connections and scale technologies that might actually move the needle on productivity and income. Whether those partnerships materialize, and whether farmers can actually afford and adopt the technologies on display, remains to be seen.