More than 1.7 million kilograms of Kenyan tea bound for Sudan remain stranded in Mombasa warehouses over a year into Khartoum's import ban, the East African Tea Trade Association said.

The trade group's account, reported this month by The EastAfrican, describes a standoff that has now stretched well past its first anniversary. Sudan's Ministry of Trade and Supply suspended imports of Kenyan tea on March 11, 2025, a move widely linked to Kenya's hosting of leaders of the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group that has fought Sudan's army since 2023; Sudan's government has cited its own national security and sovereignty. At the time, EATTA managing director George Omuga said buyers with running contracts had teas stuck at Port Sudan and warned the suspension would cause "immense losses for buyers, which will inevitably affect producers and smallholder farmers." Omuga called Sudan a top-five export market for Kenya.

That warning has held up. EATTA said the ban has fallen hardest on BP1, a tea grade Sudanese buyers purchased in bulk and that other markets do not readily absorb. Traders with active commercial contracts stood to lose 6.5 billion to 7 billion Kenyan shillings a year, roughly $50 million to $54 million at current exchange rates, if the standoff was not resolved, according to Kenyan trade reporting last October; the ban has continued since.

Much of the stranded tea was already packaged and branded specifically for Sudanese buyers, leaving exporters unable to simply redirect it to another market without repackaging it, which adds cost and further depresses the price farmers receive. The ban has not stopped all trade: Kenyan export data show 1.79 million kilograms of tea still reached Sudan in the first quarter of 2026, down 69% from a year earlier, though it is not clear by what route that volume moved. Sudan has also briefly eased the freeze at least once, allowing roughly 400 bags of tea already in transit to clear at Port Sudan, though the broader ban has stayed in force.

The Sudan closure compounds two other pressures already squeezing the Mombasa auction this year: a shipping disruption tied to the Iran conflict that stranded about 8 million kilograms of Kenyan tea and cost the sector roughly $8 million a week at its peak, and a new value-based export levy that has left Kenyan tea trading at a discount to competing origins. Kenya is the world's largest exporter of black tea, and the crop is a leading foreign-exchange earner for hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers who supply the Mombasa auction through cooperative factories.

Sources: KBC, Kenyan Tea Industry in Crisis as Sudan Suspends Imports (March 15, 2025); The EastAfrican, Farmers' losses mount as Sudan-bound tea piles up in Mombasa; Eastleigh Voice, Kenya's tea industry faces Sh6.5 billion losses as Sudan ban persists (October 5, 2025); Food Business Middle East and Africa, Kenya tea exports rise 6% in Q1 2026 as Pakistan strengthens lead.