A ravaging drought across the country has led to a biting milk shortage that has shaken Kenya’s dairy industry to the core with experts warning that the industry is entering a critical period.
Alex Gathii Gitonga, Founder and Managing Director, Tanolope Consultancy Limited, a leading dairy consultancy operating across Africa, say Kenya is not facing a simple shortage of cows. It is facing a productivity, feed, climate and dairy economics problem.
While dissecting this issue, Gitonga notes that, formal milk deliveries to processors fell from 84.4 million litres in June 2026 to 81.3 million litres in July, a 3.7 per cent decline. The Kenya Dairy Board has indicated that preliminary August figures point to a further decline.
At the retail level, the effects are already visible. Some supermarkets have experienced low stocks and have introduced purchase limits. Government has warned that prolonged drought could deepen shortages in Nairobi and other urban centres.
But the current milk shortage should not be interpreted simply as a failure of Kenya’s dairy sector. The bigger story is that Kenya has built a large dairy economy whose productivity remains highly vulnerable to feed availability, rainfall patterns and farm-level economics.
The question confronting the industry is therefore straightforward: How do we produce more milk from every cow while reducing the cost of every litre? Kenya produces more milk, but the system remains vulnerable
Kenya produced approximately 5.335 billion litres of milk in 2024. The national dairy cattle population increased by 3 per cent to approximately 5.3 million animals during the same year.
This represents significant long-term growth. Yet national production figures conceal the economics taking place at farm level. A farmer can own productive cows and still lose money. A processor can have strong consumer demand and still struggle to secure milk.
A country can have more than five billion litres of annual milk production and still experience shortages on supermarket shelves.
This apparent contradiction is explained by productivity, seasonality, feed economics, milk collection and the structure of Kenya’s dairy value chain. The drought is now showing up in milk collection data The most immediate warning signal is formal milk intake.
June 2026: 84.4 million litres July 2026: 81.3 million litres Monthly decline: 3.1 million litres Percentage decline: 3.7 per cent
The Kenya Dairy Board attributes the decline principally to dry conditions that have reduced pasture and increased pressure on animal feeds.
The decline is equivalent to approximately 103,000 litres of formal milk supply disappearing every day when the monthly reduction is averaged across 30 days.
If a 3.1 million litre monthly reduction were sustained for a year, the annualised reduction would be approximately 37.2 million litres. That is an analytical extrapolation rather than an official forecast. But it demonstrates the scale of the supply risk.
The crisis is also becoming visible to consumers. Recent media reports found supermarkets with low stocks and some retailers limiting milk purchases. The problem therefore extends beyond the farm. It moves through the entire chain:
Feed shortage → lower cow productivity → lower farm deliveries → lower processor intake → reduced retail stocks → potential price pressure.
The economics of a litre of milk. The most important number in Kenyan dairy farming is not the number of cows. It is the cost of producing one litre.
Recent dairy cost research provides an important benchmark.The average cost of producing milk across the production systems studied was approximately KSh36.20 per litre.
But averages can be misleading. The production system makes a major difference. Open grazing has been estimated at approximately KSh24.50 per litre. Semi-zero grazing is approximately KSh37.30 per litre. Zero grazing is approximately KSh39.50 per litre.
This demonstrates why dairy investment decisions cannot be based simply on herd size. The productivity and cost structure of the herd determine whether additional cows create wealth or additional costs.
Milk yield remains the biggest opportunity. Average milk production in the Kenyan dairy systems studied has been reported at approximately 9 litres per cow per day.The differences between systems are significant. Open grazing: approximately 7.2 litres per cow per day. Semi-zero grazing: approximately 8.4 litres. Zero grazing: approximately 12.3 litres.
The productivity gap between 7 litres and 12 litres per cow per day is economically enormous. For a 10-cow milking herd: 7 litres × 10 cows = 70 litres/day. 12 litres × 10 cows = 120 litres/day. That is an additional 50 litres every day without purchasing another cow.
At this point dairy economics becomes simple. Increasing milk production per cow can be more powerful than increasing the number of cows. KALRO demonstrates the productivity opportunity
Research from the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization provides an even more striking illustration. KALRO’s 2024 analysis calculated a baseline cost of approximately KSh52 per litre against a farm-gate milk price of approximately KSh46 per litre.
That represents a loss of approximately KSh6 per litre. Under an optimised commercialisation scenario involving four lactating cows producing approximately 16 litres per cow per day, the calculated cost falls to approximately KSh24 per litre.
The projected monthly profit rises to approximately KSh47,173 compared with only KSh321 under the baseline scenario.
This is perhaps one of the most important numbers in Kenya’s dairy debate. The answer to high dairy costs is not necessarily a higher milk price. A major part of the answer is productivity.
Feed is the battlefield. Feed remains one of the largest costs in milk production. Tegemeo research has repeatedly identified feed costs as a major constraint to dairy profitability. The economics become even more difficult during drought.
When pasture disappears, farmers purchase hay. When hay prices increase, farmers reduce quantities. When concentrates become expensive, farmers reduce concentrate feeding. When energy and protein intake falls, milk production falls.
The cow therefore becomes the biological transmission mechanism through which drought reaches the national economy. The problem is compounded by the structure of Kenya’s animal-feed market.
Tegemeo research on feed manufacturing has shown that raw materials represent the largest component of dairy-feed manufacturing costs. Maize and maize products, rice polish and oil cakes are particularly important cost components.
At Tanolope Consultancy, our position is straightforward. Kenya does not need to solve the dairy challenge simply by adding more cows. It needs to make existing cows more productive and profitable.
Our approach is built around farm audits, feeding systems, herd management, productivity improvement, dairy economics, and training and data-driven farm management.
Kenya needs a national dairy productivity strategy.The current crisis presents an opportunity to rethink Kenya’s dairy strategy.
Government, processors, cooperatives, feed manufacturers, financial institutions, research organisations and farmers should move from a volume-based dairy strategy toward a productivity-based strategy.
The national dashboard should include at least: Milk production per cow per day. Cost of milk per litre. Feed cost per litre. Dry matter intake. Feed conversion efficiency. Milk quality. Herd fertility. Calving interval. Replacement rate. Cow mortality. Forage reserves. Water availability. Processor intake. Farmer margin per litre.
These indicators would provide a much earlier warning system than waiting for supermarket shelves to become empty. The next frontier is dairy intelligence. Kenya has already demonstrated that it can produce more milk.The next challenge is producing that milk more efficiently.
National milk production has expanded substantially. Dairy cattle numbers have also increased. Yet the current drought demonstrates how quickly supply can become constrained when feed and water systems are disrupted.
The solution is not simply more cows.
It is better cows. Better feeding. Better forage systems. Better minerals. Better records. Better genetics. Better reproductive management. Better farm economics. Better data. And better decisions.
Kenya’s dairy industry should therefore treat the current milk shortage as an economic warning rather than simply a temporary drought problem. The country has the biological capacity to produce substantially more milk.
The question is whether it can produce that milk profitably and consistently under increasingly unpredictable climatic conditions.
For me, the target remains clear: double Africa’s milk production at the lowest possible cost while protecting cow health, farmer profitability and the long-term sustainability of the dairy industry.
Alex Gathii Gitonga is the Founder and Managing Director of Tanolope Consultancy Limited, a Kenyan dairy consultancy and training firm working with farmers, dairy investors and enterprises across Africa to improve milk productivity, feeding systems, farm profitability and dairy value-chain efficiency. Tanolope’s stated vision is to help dairy enterprises achieve higher productivity at the lowest possible cost.
