In Kav­i­suni mar­ket in Kitui, a live­stock farmer named Muton­ga once boast­ed that he did not need arith­metic because his eyes could count cat­tle. By sun­set, he had sold three of his bulls, bought lunch for his bud­dies, paid the bro­ker hand­some­ly, paid trans­port twice, and arrived home with less mon­ey than the price of one calf. His wife looked at him and said, “Your eyes count­ed the cows, but your pock­et count­ed the truth.” Kenya is now learn­ing the same lesson.

Last week, my atten­tion was drawn to the 2026 Eco­nom­ic Sur­vey, released at the end of April by the Kenya Nation­al Bureau of Sta­tis­tics. The fig­ures I took the time to study were more than just num­bers; they were a nation­al mir­ror. In 2025, Kenya import­ed goods worth about KSh 2.77 tril­lion and export­ed about KSh 1.11 tril­lion, leav­ing a trade gap of rough­ly KSh 1.65 tril­lion. This means that for every ten shillings we bought from the world, we sold back only about four.

Here is the sce­nario that should dis­turb every board­room and every kitchen. Our top five exports, tea, cut flow­ers, veg­eta­bles and fruits, appar­el, and unroast­ed cof­fee, earned about KSh 505.6 bil­lion. Petro­le­um prod­ucts alone cost about KSh 511.5 bil­lion. One import swal­lowed five export cham­pi­ons. Clean pub­lic trans­port is there­fore not a cli­mate lux­u­ry. It is for­eign exchange pro­tec­tion, from elec­tric bus­es to rail freight and effi­cient logis­tics, includ­ing solar-pow­ered cold rooms.

The import bill is not our ene­my but our teacher. Fats and oils worth about KSh 158.8 bil­lion tell farm­ers, banks, and coun­ties to take sun­flower, soya, canola, and ground­nuts seri­ous­ly. Wheat imports of about 2.23 mil­lion tonnes, com­pared with local pro­duc­tion of about 254,900 tonnes, tell us to rethink bread, seed, irri­ga­tion, stor­age, and cli­mate-smart grain zones. Iron, steel, machin­ery, and vehi­cles tell our engi­neers, jua kali arti­sans, uni­ver­si­ties, and investors where indus­tri­al courage must go.

Then there is the qui­et embar­rass­ment of meat. This week, I met a buy­er seek­ing 700 bulls for a Ramadan slaugh­ter pro­gram who strug­gled to find a reli­able local sup­ply. Yet Kenya has vast dry­lands, skilled pas­toral­ists, and ris­ing demand for qual­i­ty halal goat, sheep, and beef in the Mid­dle East and beyond. The les­son is not that live­stock should dom­i­nate the econ­o­my. The les­son is con­sis­ten­cy. Mar­kets do not buy poten­tial. They buy trace­able ani­mals, pre­dictable vol­umes, dis­ease con­trol, cold chains, abat­toirs, con­tracts, and trust.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Kenya both imports and wastes. Our posthar­vest strat­e­gy esti­mates that food loss in select­ed val­ue chains costs about KSh 72 bil­lion annu­al­ly. That is mon­ey rot­ting between farm and plate. Import replace­ment is there­fore not only about plant­i­ng more. It is about effi­cient har­vest­ing, dry­ing, cool­ing, pro­cess­ing, brand­ing well, and sell­ing together.

I sug­gest that every coun­ty hold a green import con­ver­sa­tion. What do we import most? What do we export too raw? What do we waste qui­et­ly? What can our peo­ple pro­duce, process, repair, or replace with­out destroy­ing nature? From those ques­tions emerge oil crops in Kitui, goats in Isi­o­lo, man­go dry­ing in Makueni, cof­fee roast­ing in Nyeri, wheat tri­als in Narok, elec­tric charg­ing in Nairo­bi, and cold rooms in every seri­ous market.

We, cit­i­zens, must delib­er­ate­ly track what we buy. Our youth must form enter­pris­es for aggre­ga­tion, pro­cess­ing, and repair. Our gov­ern­ments must map their top import oppor­tu­ni­ties and build water, roads, stor­age, and mar­kets around them. Nation­al lead­er­ship must align cred­it, stan­dards, research, vet­eri­nary sys­tems, ener­gy, and procurement. 

A coun­try that respects num­bers stops giv­ing its future to care­less con­sump­tion, as Muton­ga did. For sure, Kenya’s import bill is a map, not a curse, and the ques­tion is whether we will read it with unmatched courage and then invest where the num­bers have been point­ing for many years. Kenya’s best for­eign exchange earn­er is the shilling we no longer send abroad. Think green. Act green!