How Kenya can become global leather powerhouse
By John Otini, June 26, 2025Kenya’s leather industry, despite its significant potential, remains largely trapped in low-value segments of the global market.
Experts now say that this is not a problem of raw material scarcity or lack of infrastructure, but a deeper structural flaw: Kenya has focused too much on supply chains and too little on building value chains.
Bitange Ndemo, former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication and Liesbeth Bakker of the Centre for Applied Sciences and Business Innovation, argue that the country’s leather strategy has prioritised movement over transformation.
“Kenya has concentrated its efforts on building supply chains, not value chains,” they write. “This sequencing fallacy—believing that value can be added later—locks the country into the lowest value segments of the global leather market.”
This critique comes as the government continues to channel resources into the sector. In the 2025/26 Budget, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi announced a proposed allocation of Sh340 million towards the development of the Kenya Leather Industrial Park in Kenanie, Machakos County.
“I have also proposed Ksh340 million for the development of the Leather Industrial Park at Kenanie,” he said during his Budget Statement in Parliament.
The 500-acre park is a flagship initiative aimed at positioning Kenya as a manufacturing and export hub for leather, footwear, and allied products. Managed jointly by the Kenya Leather Development Council (KLDC) and the Export Processing Zones Authority, the park is expected to create over 10,000 jobs and attract both local and international investors.
Yet Ndemo and Bakker warn that such efforts, though commendable, are not enough if they are not anchored in a value chain framework.
“Supply chains prioritise speed, volume, and cost. Value chains focus on the creation and capture of value at each step,” they argue. “Kenya has built the skeleton. But what it lacks is the nervous system.”
Leading producers
Despite being among Africa’s leading producers of hides and skins—with close to 20 million cattle, 27 million goats, and 18 million sheep—only about two per cent of Kenyan hides are converted into fully finished leather. Most are semi-processed and exported, earning low returns.
An example from Narok illustrates the gap. A hide from a cow slaughtered in the county is often sold for just a few hundred shillings.
Months later, the same hide reappears in a luxury mall in Nairobi as part of a leather handbag retailing for Ksh16,000—sometimes even stamped with a European brand name.
The problem, experts say, lies in the country’s misplaced emphasis on logistics and throughput.
“We have built systems that efficiently transport hides from rural slaughterhouses to urban tanneries and then onto export markets,” Ndemo and Bakker observe.
“But we have not developed the infrastructure for transformation—grading facilities, finishing workshops, design studios, or branding and retail support.”
A senior official from KLDC noted that the Kenanie project aims to address this by creating a one-stop processing and manufacturing hub.
“Farmers will now have a direct link to processors, cutting off middlemen and reducing post-slaughter waste,” he said.
However, experts say the leather park must include capacity for high-value transformation—customised finishing, product prototyping, design innovation, and market development.
The potential markets for leather go far beyond handbags. Global demand spans across sectors such as automotive upholstery, industrial safety gear, furniture, footwear, and luxury packaging.
But each of these markets requires different kinds of leather and finishes—something Kenya’s current supply-driven system is not configured to produce.
“Imagine a system where hides are graded by quality and purpose, where tanneries are equipped to produce specific finishes for shoes or furniture, and where Kenyan brands tell authentic stories,” write Ndemo and Bakker. “That is the leap from supply to value.”