Mutahi Kagwe: Coffee hawking messing agriculture sector
By Loise Wambugu, November 6, 2025Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has cautioned individuals involved in coffee hawking, saying they are fueling crime within the sector and should be reported to authorities.
Speaking in Nyeri town on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, Kagwe said it had been discovered that coffee hawking was even taking place in entertainment joints, where traders sell coffee while drinking alcohol.
“In fact, I’m told there are bars where people are going to take beer and on the sideline, they come with coffee and consume the money they sell the coffee with on alcohol. Both the seller and the buyer are wrong because coffee hawking is illegal and the seller does not have a license,” Kagwe said.
Kagwe noted that the illegal trade has led to suspiciously large volumes of coffee being delivered to factories by farmers with very small pieces of land.
“If one has a quarter of an acre and he brings to the factory 10,000 kgs of coffee, the factory manager should ask himself where he got all the coffee from. These are the people who are involved in criminal activities and they are messing the entire coffee and other sectors,” he said.
He urged factory managers to be more vigilant and to question any farmer whose deliveries exceed the production capacity of their farms.
Also watch: Mutahi Kagwe calls for an end to tea hawking.
Nyeri Senator Wahome Wamatinga, who also spoke during the event, said one way to curb coffee theft is to involve young people in farming by allocating them coffee bushes to manage.
“We want to use reverse engineering because the young people now have seen that they can make money through farming, and we are requesting parents to allocate a few bushes to the young people because farming is rewarding,” he said.