Kenya Tanneries Association Chairman Robert Njoka
By: John Kariuki
The Government has been implored upon to walk the talk and show it’s commitment towards boosting local leather Production as opposed to allowing imports of products which can be locally manufactured.
According to Kenya Tanneries Association Chairman Robert Njoka, he observed that with proper support, the leather value chain can be upscale to create more than two million jobs in just two years.
At the moment the Government has established the Kenya Leather Industrial Park in Kenanie which is currently under construction. This will be the hub of leather development in Kenya. Once complete it shall be able to manufacture quality leather products enough for local consumption and export. This will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
But Mr Njoka observed:
“Currently the leather industry as a whole it has got the Greatest challenge it has never faced for the last over 30 years. The last financial bill the government removed the duty of export of raw hides from eighty percent to fifty percent or point 35 dollars per kilo or whichever is high. So with that it leaves us with minimal solutions to our problems having in mind that our Kenya raw hides quality is very poor due to lack of quality management from the ministry of livestock and where we have been pushing right left to see whether we can improve raw hides because you see having the second highest livestock population in East Africa from Tanzania you find if we require high quality hides we can only do that from Uganda or from Rwanda.
So it’s unfortunate then when the government come on board and give us a position that this is a country where they want to become a manufacturing country and the same time the same administration is giving us a position that they want our raw material to be exported.
These are double standards because you can’t be exporting your raw material at the same time you are telling the investors to increase the capacity for more production of the leather, for more consumption of raw material and at the same time the government is busy setting up a leather industrial park where it has spent almost three billion, actually it leaves the stakeholders confused is the government sure of what it’s telling us or there’s somebody interested with his own game in the whole industry.
So it’s my humble request if the government can have second thinking for one reason because everyday we hear our president is very interested in this industry and if you look even at his Kenya Kwanza manifesto leather industry was one of the areas the government promised to support.”
Similar Posts by The Mt Kenya Times:
- Green Belt Movement concerned over plans to excise Uhuru and Central Parks for Highway expansion
- NEWS IN BRIEF 4 JUNE 2026
- A nation that keeps drinking its own poison and calling it medicine
- EACC arrest Nyamira county clerk in shocking KSh 30 million scandal
- Maputo and Pretoria at odds over reports of Mozambican deaths in South Africa’s xenophobic violence
About the Author
