In the heart of Northern Kenya lies a potential agricultural revolution waiting to be unleashed — Garissa County, often overlooked and stereotyped as a dry, pastoral region, holds a secret weapon in Kenya’s food security battle: 894,000 hectares (2.24 million acres) of arable land, representing nearly 20% of Garissa’s total land area.
Imagine this — if this land were to be put under wheat cultivation, powered by Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and irrigation, Kenya’s food landscape would be transformed overnight.
🔹 Annual wheat production would hit 10.7 million metric tonnes (MTs) — five times our current national consumption of 2.1 million MTs (2021).
🔹 Kenya could feed itself without importing wheat for five years straight, ending dependency on food aid or costly imports.
🔹 We’d save over KES 60 billion annually, currently spent on importing wheat (1.8 million MTs in 2021 alone).
🔹 Kenya would dethrone Egypt as Africa’s largest wheat producer and rise to 17th globally.
🔹 With a surplus of 8 million MTs, Kenya would tap into a foreign exchange bonanza of nearly $6.6 billion, making us the 7th largest wheat exporter globally, after giants like Russia, USA, and Australia.
🔹 The impact wouldn’t stop at production. Up to 2 million Kenyans could find employment, both directly and indirectly, fueling expanded tax revenues, especially through PAYE.
🔹 The ripple effect? A thriving ecosystem of agribusiness — from transport and storage to dairy farming (thanks to increased availability of barn feed), value addition, and rural transformation.
What’s even more astounding? This agricultural revolution would need an investment of about KES 1.2 trillion — four times the cost of the SGR, and just 12 times what the Nairobi Expressway cost. Yet, the returns would dwarf those infrastructure projects in terms of food security, economic impact, and social inclusion.
Even if only 25% of the arable land is irrigated and utilized effectively, the results would be nothing short of transformational — and this is just Garissa County. Imagine the potential when factoring in the rest of Northern Kenya.
It’s time to shift the national mindset — Garissa is not just semi-arid land. It’s a goldmine. A grain basket. A frontier of opportunity. With the right political will, policy support, and investment, Garissa could be the key to turning Kenya from a wheat importer into a global agricultural powerhouse.
