The Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA) has announced plans to increase Kenya's edible oil production from five to fifty percent in the next five years.

The authority attributed the high imports (95 percent) to low production despite the country having a great potential in the region.

AFA plans to import 500 metric tonnes of Sunflower seeds from Zambia to be distributed to farmers in 24 counties under the Edible Oils Promotion project.

Among the counties targeted are Bungoma, Busia, Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Kitui, Kilifi, Kakamega, Meru, Lamu, Makueni, Embu, Taita Taveta and Kwale. 

This emerged at a stakeholders meeting in Naivasha on ways of increasing edible oil production and reducing the current import bill.

According to the Director of Crops in the Ministry of Agriculture Douglas Kangi, they were working with the 24 counties to meet their targets.

He said that under the project, the ministry through AFA plans to increase land under sunflower production from 50,000 to 250,000 by next year.

“At the end of this five year project, we plan to increase land under sunflower production to one million acres and this will see edible oil production rise to 50 from five percent,” he said.

Addressing the press, Kangi said that they had settled on sunflower, as it is cost effective and took three months to mature.

Kangi said the government has set aside Sh1 billion for the project with focus on sunflower as demand for macadamia had gone down globally.

AFA board members Peterson Muthathai said that the 500MT of the seeds, which had been procured from Zambia, would arrive in the country before the end of October.

 “Kenya Seed Company has 70MT of the sunflower seeds which will be used for multiplication while the 500MT will be distributed to registered farmers,” he said.

Gideon Menjo from the Presidential Economic Transformation secretariat said was uses more than Sh160 billion annually to import edible oils but increasing local production could reduce this.

“Edible oils account for over Sh160 billion import bill and the duty-free imports on the oil were meant to cushion consumers from the high prices,” he said.