Kenyan shilling

Kenya's tea scarcity due to drought boosted prices, a positive change given years of depressed foreign earnings.

The Tea Board of Kenya (TBK) said the country reported an increase in shipments to $1.07 billion (KSh139.21 billon) last year. Exporters sold their produce in hard currencies such as the US dollar and the euro. Rainfall totals in 2022 were the lowest in 70 years. Agricultural products, including tea, flowers and corn, account for 20 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employ more than 40 percent of the population, according to a Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) survey conducted in January this year. Most of Kenya’s tea is shipped to Pakistan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United Kingdom (UK). And due to a weak shilling, the average price of the leaves at the Mombasa tea auction jumped 18.6 percent to an average of $2.49 (KSh324) per kilogram last year.