On a cold, rainy April day, John Mwaura, 63, walked his two-acre farm in Gakoe, a small town in central Kenya’s Gatundu North Constituency, to inspect his dew-covered tea bushes while his workers plucked its leaves nearby.
Mwaura worries the tea leaves will overmature and become unusable if they aren’t picked on time. But shipping disruptions caused by the Iran war means he may have the hard decision of either letting the tea leaves go to waste on the bush or having them sit in storage indefinitely.
The spring harvest season lasts from March to May, and trucks normally come three to four times a day to pick up tea leaves from Mwaura’s farm and other surrounding farms and deliver them to a nearby factory for processing into black tea. Now, the trucks collect only twice a day.
Since the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, shipping disruptions have upended Kenya’s tea trade. With Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the United States’ April 13 blockade, shipping goods to Iran or past it has become nearly impossible.
Kenya exported $32.8 million worth of tea to Iran in 2024, making the Middle Eastern country among the top ten buyers of Kenyan tea.
“At the moment the business is stagnating … prices are lowering,” Mwaura told CT. “In April, some factories were unable to pay mini-bonuses to farmers.” A mini-bonus is paid to farmers before the main bonus at the end of the year.
Like many of his neighbors, Mwaura worries the ongoing conflict and blockades will bankrupt small growers. If exporters have too much stock waiting to ship, factories can’t sell them more tea. Likewise, if the farmers can’t sell to the backlogged factories, cash shortages can force them to lay off workers or borrow money from loan sharks at high interest rates. So far, they’ve managed to keep going, but a spoiled or unsold harvest could devastate them.
“We are praying for an end to the war,” Mwaura said. “With war, the tea business is not sustainable.”
The eruption of hostilities between the United States, Israel, and Iran placed Kenya in an awkward position. Kenya has traditionally maintained warm diplomatic relationships with the US and Israel, yet Iran is a major trade partner—Kenya’s 10th largest export customer in 2024.
Kenya’s tea industry accounts for 16 percent of the nation’s exports and 10 percent of the country’s total income from foreign trade. It also employs—directly or indirectly—over 7 million Kenyans.
Joseph Mbugua, a factory worker and a farmer in Gachege, Gatundu North, said farmers were shocked when they could not get their expected bonuses and payments, which have been consistent for the last 20 years.
“We are demoralized and we have to get into debts we did not plan for,” Mbugua said.
Mwaura, a member of African Independent Pentecostal Churches of Africa (AIPCA), said the plight of farmers and laborers has become a constant prayer item in his church. He explained that Christians are stepping in to help the day laborers who can’t provide for their families right now.
“To cushion them against the harsh economic situation, they are given foodstuffs, and those who fall sick are supported with money for medication and other pressing needs,” Mwaura said.
Before the conflict erupted, Kenya and Iran had entered talks to expand trade in 2026, particularly for meat and flowers. Now exporters of these goods are reporting heavy losses. The unclear future of trade with Iran and disruptions to exports to the Middle East have shocked Kenya’s already struggling economy.
George Omuga, managing director of East African Tea Trade Association, told Kenyan newspaper The Standard that between 6 and 8 million kilograms (13.2–17.6 million pounds) of tea are just sitting in warehouses in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa. Tea exporters expect an 18 percent decline in business this year due to the war.
Mwaura fears fluctuating prices will create an imbalance in the supply and demand for Kenyan tea, lowering farmers’ earnings and ability to purchase needed equipment: “The farmers will produce a lot of tea while the buyers will be few.”
If this happens, many of his neighbors won’t be able to send their children back to school at the end of April as they won’t be able to pay the fees.
Mbugua expressed similar concerns: “To get children back to school, many (farmers) will have to sell their cows or lease a portion of their land to get money to fill the gap in their budgets.”
Mbugua said Kenya’s fuel costs—already higher than usual—have increased even more, raising the cost of tea production in factories, an expense many business owners haven’t budgeted for.
The bottleneck of cargo ships and oil tankers at the Strait of Hormuz—a key maritime corridor for roughly 20 percent of global oil and energy exports—has also impacted the cost of transporting tea within Kenya, not to mention international shipping. These additional costs, along with delivery delays that can erode the quality of teas, could undermine Kenya’s competitiveness against rival tea producers in Sri Lanka and India.
Kenyan principal secretary for industry Juma Mukhwana told news outlet NTV Kenya he hopes these losses will be offset by a possible deal to allow duty-free exports to China. “We have lost the Middle East market, but we have replaced it with an even bigger market of 1.4 billion people,” he said. “That is an area that we want our exporters to look at because it is a huge market.”
Other industry players recommend that Kenya diversify its markets by increasing trade with other African countries. Some hope the Kenyan government will take steps to ease the burden on tea farmers. Mwaura suggested the government cushion farmers by reducing some taxes.
Mwaura encourages other farmers to help themselves by adding value to their teas—such as developing flavored teas or instant teas that fetch more money in the market and exporting them to alternative markets in the US, Europe, or Australia. When farmers sell unprocessed tea, the market price stays much lower, he said.
Mwaura now advises other farmers about supply chains, pricing, and how to protect themselves from the impacts of foreign conflicts on their businesses. He told me that many small-scale farmers who usually sell their produce to the national tea agency, KTDA, are considering growing other high-value crops—including stevia, vegetables, and ingredients for essential oils—to supplement their tea harvests. But that could take years to bear fruit.
Still, Mwaura thinks a bigger solution needs to come from the US, Iran, and Israel.
“I would like them to make peace,” Mwaura said. “There should be respect between nations, because if they don’t agree, we may end up with another world war.”
The post Iran Tensions Threaten Kenya’s Largest Export Industry: Tea appeared first on Christianity Today.
