The High Court has ordered the government to first purchase locally produced rice nationwide before proceeding with the remaining half of a planned 500,000-tonne duty-free import programme to protect domestic farmers from price collapse.
- •The court also allowed the government to import the remaining 254,000 tonnes of rice approved under a July 2025 gazette notice in three equal tranches of about 85,000 tonnes each, scheduled for March, April and May 2026.
- •This will only happen after a 30-day nationwide buying exercise targeting all local farmers, millers and traders across all major rice-producing regions including Mwea, Ahero, Bunyala, Bura, Nyatike, Kuja and Kano.
- •The decision follows a challenge by rice farmers who argued that the government’s import programme, while intended to stabilise retail prices, risked undercutting large volumes of unsold local rice still held in farms and storage facilities across major producing regions.
"While the Court approves the importation of the balance of 254,000MT to fill the supply gap and stabilise both availability and the prices, the same must be structured as to avoid dumping of large quantities of duty-free rice as to cause an abrupt and drastic decrease in the price of the rice and therefore income of the farmer,” Judge Edward Muriithi stated.
A court had ruled in August allowing the importation of half that volume on condition that the government first “mopped up” locally produced rice. The remaining imports were put on hold pending proof that the local buying exercise had been carried out.
By October, government agencies reported that about 255,000 tonnes of rice had already been imported duty-free. However, the court found that the accompanying mop-up effort was limited in scope, largely confined to cooperatives working with the Kenya National Trading Corporation (KNTC) and conducted mainly at farm-gate level.
According to figures presented by the farmers, the government had purchased only about 10,280 bags of rice. They claimed that farmers were still holding about 65,000 bags in storage, with a further 1.42 million bags expected from the main harvest between mid-November and December. Millers in the Mwea region alone claimed to be holding close to 100,000 bags of unsold rice.
The government acknowledged that it had not bought rice directly from individual farmers or independent millers outside cooperative structures. The judge concluded that the limited mop-up failed to adequately protect local producers and shifted the burden of food security policy onto farmers by exposing them to cheaper imported rice before their stocks were absorbed.
“It is possible to uphold the farmers’ interests to an economic return on their agricultural production as well as seal the deficit in the demand/consumption against the available production and thereby implement the Government obligations in respect of the constitutional right to adequate food,” the court added in the most recent ruling.
The court rejected the State’s explanation that unsold rice was destined for alternative markets, noting that there was no evidence the government had offered to purchase that rice and been turned away.
