Kenya's tea farmers earned a cumulative Sh55 billion ($424.02 million) from exports in the first half of 2026, and the Tea Board of Kenya's chief executive said the country's new export levy has had a negligible effect on price.

Kenyan tea fetched an average of $2.28 a kilogram, about Sh295, across the first 24 auction sales of the year, the board said. That put Kenya's price behind Rwanda's, which averaged Sh386 ($2.98) a kilogram on the same auction floor despite offering far smaller volumes than Kenya's 186.2 million kilograms.

This publication reported in June that the levy, a charge of about 0.8% of a shipment's auction or customs value in force since May 1, had left buyers turning to untaxed tea from Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi, and left more than 10 million kilograms of Kenyan tea unsold in Mombasa warehouses.

Tea Board of Kenya chief executive Willy Mutai pushed back on the idea that the levy was driving the price gap. "What determines the value of tea offered by a factory is the quality," he said. "The effect of the tea levy on the price is negligible." He added that Rwanda's own volumes were too small to give buyers a reliable alternative to Kenyan tea: "The volumes offered by Rwanda are too small compared to Kenyan volumes, making it impossible for buyers to rely on it."

The board's own absorption data points the other way from the unsold-stock warnings raised earlier in June. At Sale 24, factories managed by the Kenya Tea Development Agency sold 74% of the tea they offered, up from 60% at the same sale a year earlier, the board said.

Rwanda's tea brought in about Sh5.1 billion ($39.32 million) over the same stretch, a fraction of Kenya's Sh55 billion despite the higher per-kilo price.

Sources: Food Business Africa, Kenya tea farmers earn US$424M from exports.