East Africa's dynamic dairy

摘要

It is fair to say that cheese and other processed dairy products have not traditionally played a key role in tickling the Kenyan collective palate, but that was yesterday. Now, as the country grows, a middle class interested in consumer consumption has seen exponential growing demand for dairy products of all kinds. Kenya's dairy sales have seen steady growth over the years, according to London-based market research company Euromonitor International. The East African country saw US$2.48 billion (€1.15bn) in dairy sales in 2017, reached US$2.68bn in 2018 and this increased by six per cent to US$2.9bn in 2019. Kenyans "love dairy, hence the industry enjoys good growth overall," Euromonitor analyst Anje du Plessis told Dairy Industries International. It is likely that this long term trend will survive the Covid-19 crisis, with milk sales expected to remain resilient, even though demand for some added value products such as butter and cheese may fall in the short term because of their higher costs. Kenya's outbreak, according to official figures has been relatively mild - with 582 official cases as of 6 May.