Kenyan government has recently announced that the cotton sector will be a key area of focus for growth in the coming months.
Increasing revenues from around US$35 million to US$20 billion, the introduction of biotechnologies and the creation of thousands of new jobs were among the main talking points of a statement made at a cotton stakeholder meeting in Nairobi.
Charles Waturu, director of the Horticulture Research Institute at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization, stated that with the use of hybrids there has been plans to introduce the development of cotton production.
Waturu also demanded that this inventiveness could see 50,000 workers trained for employment within the agricultural sector and 500,000 succeeding jobs could be created in the clothing sector.
A provisional commercialisation of Bt cotton trials road map and have identified the nine sites for National Performance Trials was agreed in a recent appointed task force.
Kenya's cotton has been low in competition to the more efficient producers in India, China, Bangladesh and Vietnam, says, Dickson Kibata, technical advisor on fiber crops at Kenya’s Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA).
According to Kibata at present compared to a market demand of around 25,000 tonnes there are around 30,000 Kenyan farmers involved in cotton growing, producing 4,000 tonnes and so suggesting an increase in investment will be important to enable capacity building technologies to be implemented.
