Kenya's agriculture, forestry and fishing sector has reached its highest share of gross domestic product yet, according to the Economic Survey 2026 released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
- •The sector accounted for 23.2% of GDP, equivalent to KSh 4.07 trillion of Kenya's KSh 17.58 trillion economy, even as its growth rate slowed to 3.1% from 4.4% in 2024.
- •The sector is Kenya's largest by a substantial margin beating financial and insurance activities, the fastest-growing sector in 2025, which generated KSh 1.46 trillion.
- •Manufacturing sector comes third at KSh 1.25 trillion. Agriculture is more than three times the size of both.
Growth within the sector was uneven with Fishing and aquaculture expanding 16.5%, the fastest sub-sector performance, extending a decade-long run that has taken its nominal value from KSh 13.6 billion in 2009 to KSh 146.1 billion in 2025.
Animal production grew 3.8%. Growing of crops, which alone accounts for 15.7% of total GDP, grew just 2.4% to KSh 2.76 Trillion, held back by an 8.0% decline in tea production and a 24.7% fall in cane deliveries, both attributed to below-average short rains during the second half of the year.
Input costs are also rising faster than output with the sector's intermediate consumption increasing from KSh 570.6 billion in 2021 to KSh 940.8 billion in 2025, a 64.9% rise over four years. Output over the same period grew 59.0%. The margin between what the sector produces and what it costs to produce is narrowing.
Despite slower growth, agriculture remained the second-largest contributor to overall GDP expansion in 2025, accounting for 11.4% of total growth.
Agriculture represented 16.3% of GDP in 2009, crossed 20% in 2016, and has not fallen below that threshold since. A spike to 23.0% in 2020, when Covid-19 suppressed output across other sectors, initially appeared temporary. Five years on, the share has held and edged higher, suggesting agriculture's weight in the economy has permanently reset rather than temporarily inflated.
