Continent Fails to Make a Mark At the Global

Year after year, Kenya is either the world's largest or second largest tea exporter; and about 16 African countries like Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Cameroon also produce tea, though none of the other countries even makes for a fraction of Kenya's dominant market position.

But when the World Tea Expo from June 9 to 11 was held in Atlanta, Georgia, it counted exactly two stands with orthodox African teas from Kenya and the UK, the latter specialist showcasing Malawian white teas! Again only two among 280 exhibitors.

The annual trade exposition, which addresses retailers such as tea shops and tea houses, is centering on orthodox speciality teas, herbal tisanes, and tea-related gifts.

Its 4,456 visitors (plus the exhibitors) were treated to four well-attended tasting panels, which presented and exalted many different orthodox teas from the four regions of Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, China. But not from Africa.

Why? Because as it appeared, there was not enough of worth to be tasted. Almost no tea of nobility and distinction; instead, CTC mass ware of inferior quality, over 90 per cent sold only in bulk, cheaply and anonymously, and thus not figuring on this Expo.

The traditional policy of all African tea-producing states is still obvious: produce ever more and more tea, at lower and lower qualities, thus creating cheaper and cheaper prices.

Pundits say that the gigantic Mombasa tea auction holds small countries like Malawi and Uganda in a mercilessly impoverishing stranglehold. Yet nobody benefits from this slide towards the abyss: not the impoverished tea farmers, not the overburdened factories, not the national economy, and least of all the disappointed consumers overseas, who still sip 95 per cent or Kenya's tea production.

The only ones to profit are a handful of brokers, traders and KTDA (Kenya Tea Development Authority) functionaries, who jointly -by errors of omission and commission- keep prices and quality equally low.

The latest move by Parliament to pass a motion to bring back KTDA under State control can address that problem.

One of the arguments we have heard - and from parliament also - is that as long as KTDA exists in its present challenged form it still remain an obstacle for Kenya's tea quality and Kenya's tea exports.

We need to look again at the long-time loan arrangements, late tea bonus payments and the opaque accounting practices that have been described several times as a negative examples in recent international development literature.

While the liberalization of the Kenyan coffee sector has already been successfully - albeit with teething problems- the same has yet to take place in the much larger and weightier tea sector.

And paradoxical as it may seem, the present parliamentary motion aiming at putting back KTDA under strict State control will be the necessary first step to achieve this goal.

In any tea shop, any house of tea, any mail-order retailer in the USA, in Canada, in England, in France, in Germany, one will see many dozens, probably over a hundred teas for retail sale there, with consumer prices ranging from Sh280 to over Sh2,500 per one hundred grams: black, Oolong, green, and white orthodox teas, not to speak of the various aromatised teas.

Most of these are from the entire Indian subcontinent with China - the homeland of tea taking a big chunk. But then we find hardly a single one from Africa; and if so, that one will almost invariably be the Kenyan "Milima", a blend of teas grown on three of the James Finlay's tea estates (owned by John Swire & Sons Ltd in London), and made at their Saosa factory.

This is a lower middle class black GFOP tea priced in the lower middle class range, with uneven quality from one delivered batch to the other. Importers, wholesalers and retailers abroad would gladly exchange this present "standard" orthodox Kenyan tea against better quality products, and will readily pay higher prices - but they simply are not offered those !

Indeed, KTDA even refuses to answer inquiries about their alleged white tea: "we will not tell you, and we are not interested in answering any import inquiries presently", said Kangaita factory manager Kana Godana. KTDA's GM Sales & Marketing Charles Mbui said as much. A previous, normal but detailed email inquiry about this not-so-Kenyan-appearing white tea to its Australian retailers generated an avalanche of panicked warning emails.

Observers say that only these three small-amount Kenyan white teas on the World Tea Expo showed the potential that is present and could easily be unleashed; and those tasters who like the writer of this report believe in the potential and quality of African teas at large, had to console themselves with these interesting and expensive exquisite niche products.