Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua appears to have met with the real iceberg in the coffee sector. Previously, the tip appeared easy to deal with after promising to deal with coffee cartels. Speaking months ago, Rigathi said that farmers have for long suffered under cartels who take advantage of farmers. He claimed that it’s time that stops.
Speaking during a church service in Nyeri county, Gachagua changed his talk. Instead of “crushing”, them, he and the government has nothing against cartels and now wants them to share the profits with the government instead of taking everything.
“We have nothing against them (cartels). All we are asking is to share the profits with you (cartels). Don’t take everything. And that’s the problem that we’ve had in this sector. Because they want to take everything. We know how much they sell and how much they pay us (taxes). Our fight is to have 50-50 on profits.”
This conflicts the statements he said previously about the same issue. The question now remains, if the government wants 50-50 with cartels, who will save the farmers.
However, the DP stated the possibility of the American coffeehouse Starbucks to start sourcing their coffee directly from Kenya. This he said is among the agenda that President William Ruto is engaging with US Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman.
“I thank the President. He spoke with Ambassador Meg Whitman and she has planned coffee buyers in America called Starbucks to come here and meet the president and me. This is so that they (Starbucks) can be buying our coffee directly.”
The DP also gave an insight where he claimed that brokers comprise of countries that have no coffee plants but export the largest ammount of it due to being brokers.
“The people who buy our coffee are not Americans it is bought by people in Europe. And even there is one country that sells the most coffee in the world yet they have no single coffee plant. They are just brokers now we want to remove them.”
It remains unclear whether the government will fight cartels in the sector by cutting them out of business or fishing them out. The latter seems impossible as Deputy President said that instead of crushing them, he wants them to share profits. This means the fight wasn’t easy as he thought.