Kenya's tea exports grew 10 per cent in 2025. China took two per cent of them.
The Tea Board of Kenya's own figures show where the volume goes, and where it does not.
The Tea Board of Kenya published its Tea Industry Performance Report for 2025. Three numbers in it explain why this summit exists.
The headline
Kenya exported 652.8 million kilogrammes of tea in 2025, up 9.81 per cent on the 594.5 million kilogrammes shipped in 2024. Export earnings reached KES 186.91 billion, a rise of 2.87 per cent. Total marketed value came to KES 218.79 billion.
Volume grew faster than value, which is its own story about price. But the number that matters most for anyone planning a market strategy is the one underneath.
Where it goes
Pakistan takes 36 per cent of Kenya's tea exports: 235.13 million kilogrammes, worth KES 73.41 billion.
China, the largest tea market in the world, imported 13,011 tonnes of Kenyan tea in 2024. Against Kenya's export volume that is close to two per cent.
Why concentration is a risk rather than a strength
A buyer taking more than a third of national output is a good customer and a single point of failure at the same time. Currency moves, import policy changes, a shift in domestic demand: any of these arrives as a shock to the whole industry rather than to one exporter.
The usual answer is diversification, and diversification usually means finding buyers who are already large. On that measure China is the obvious candidate and the one Kenya has reached least.
What sits between access and volume
Market access is necessary and not sufficient. A Chinese importer buying at scale needs consistent grade, packaging suited to the destination channel, traceability documentation, and a relationship with a supplier who answers the phone. Those are commercial and operational problems rather than policy ones, and they get solved between people rather than between governments.
That is the work of the summit. Three days in Nairobi, 21–23 April 2027, for producers, exporters, importers, buyers and the investors and technology suppliers around them.
Sources
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