A recent World Bank report has ranked Kenya top in Africa in enabling agribusinesses. The report covers seven regions and 62 countries. It highlights topic scores in eight areas of Seed, fertilizer, machinery, finance, markets, transport, water and ICT.
Kenya obtained the highest topic scores representing a large number of good practices in laws and regulations as measured in each topic.
Kenya emerged top with an average score of 64 percent, beating some of the continent’s economic giants such as Morocco 59.2%, Nigeria 50.4%, and Egypt 37.9%.
”In the water category, Kenya almost doubled the global and continental averages of 49 and 45 percent, registering 85.04 percent, surpassing that of high-income countries which stands at 71 percent. Other categories where Kenya was above the global average include seeds, ICT and finance, where it scored 79.2, 77.78 and 74.3 points respectively. Global average in those areas is 56, 59 and 52 points in that order” Reports The Star.
Kenya scored 56 points in the machinery category, 68.6 in transport but failed to meet the global minimum in the market and fertilizer categories, scoring 32.9 and 41 percent respectively. The poor market scores for Kenya and Africa perhaps explain why 30 percent of food produced in the continent does not reach the marketplace.