interesting yet sad fact...

It may be news to many of yo'all that Kenya exports its tea and coffee to the EU duty free (or largely duty free) and this is possible by virtue of the EU-ACP (European Union- African Caribbean Pacific Countries) Agreement, through which the EU decided to grant concessions to the said countries by reducing their tariffs/duties for particular goods to a duty free level. The arrangement was to last for a number of years and was facilitated through the LOME Convention (this might be more familiar) and further the COTONOU Agreement. The sad part is that the above arrangement comes to an end on 31st December 2007. This effectively means that come Jan 2008, our coffee and tea will be taxed fully at whatever bound tariff rate that the EU sets. This means that Kenya's coffee will have to compete with Brazilian coffee and our tea with Indonesian tea...and my guess is as good as yours: i doubt our coffee and tea is competitive enough to survive in the global market.

Now, once you bear in mind that the only thing that Kenya exports is agricultural produce.. the dilemna comes into correct perspective. When our agricultural produce, which was protected by the LOME Convention, is stripped bare of the said protection... our coffee and tea sector will collapse and we can only imagine what will happen to the rest of the economy, if no measures are taken to reduce the production cost of our produce, rehabilitation of our infrastructure among other fundamental changes that need to occur in our country.

Someone ought to stand up and shout!