680,000 Farmers. Zero Carbon Credits. Kenya’s Greatest Climate Finance Scandal.

Expanding the Notes on Tea and Coffee Farmers’ Carbon Sequestration

Kenya’s tea and coffee farmers sequester over 1.25 million tonnes of carbon every year on the world’s behalf. They have never received a shilling for it. Across approximately 342,700 hectares of highland farms, Sh3.26 billion in carbon credit income is forfeited annually. Not because the science is unclear, not because the market doesn’t exist, but because nobody in power has chosen to act.

Kenya’s Tea and Coffee Farmers: Unacknowledged Carbon Stewards

By Dr. rer. nat. habil. Dr. Seronei Chelulei Cheison (CEO of the Sinonin Group) March 2026

Kenya’s Carbon-Rich Landscapes

Stand at the edge of a tea farm in Nandi Hills, Kericho, Kiambu or Murang’a at dawn and you will understand, instinctively, that something extraordinary is happening. Row upon row of dense green bushes stretch toward the horizon, breathing quietly in the highland mist. What you are witnessing is not merely agriculture; it is, in the language of climate science, a living carbon sink—a landscape that pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it, year after year, in roots, woody stems, and deep, dark soil.

Kenya is the third-largest exporter of tea in the world. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the Tea Board of Kenya, and the latest USDA FAS analysis (2025), the country’s tea planted area stood at 227,777 hectares in 2023 and reached approximately 229,200 hectares in 2025 (with 228,400 ha confirmed for 2024). This has grown steadily from 206,000 hectares in 2019, driven largely by smallholder expansion in our highland zones. Add to this 113,503 hectares under coffee (Agriculture and Food Authority – AFA Yearbook of Statistics 2025), and Kenya’s two flagship crops together cover over 342,700 hectares of some of the most carbon-rich agricultural land on the continent. Yet in every serious conversation about Kenya’s response to climate change, these landscapes are almost entirely absent. That silence is a costly mistake.

The Science Is Clear

Unlike maize, wheat, or vegetables, tea and coffee are perennial woody plants. They do not die at the end of each season. Their roots go deep, their stems thicken with age, and they accumulate carbon in their biomass for decades. Peer-reviewed studies confirm that a well-managed tea plantation sequesters between 2 and 4 tonnes of CO₂ per hectare every year (with Kenyan and comparable tropical data aligning at the conservative end). A shade-grown coffee farm, where bushes grow beneath a canopy of larger trees, can store carbon stocks comparable to a secondary forest, with annual sequestration often exceeding 5 tonnes of CO₂ per hectare in integrated systems (total biomass + soil stocks far higher). These are not abstract claims. Kenya’s tea sector is divided between the Kenya Tea Development Agency’s (KTDA) smallholder network. Over 680,000 farmers managing approximately 112,500 hectares across 71 factories and contributing ~52% of national green leaf and large private estates covering the remaining ~116,700 hectares. In coffee, 84,951 hectares are farmed by cooperatives and smallholders, and 28,552 hectares by estates.

Each and every one of these hectares is sequestering carbon every day. Not one farmer, smallholder or estate, has ever been paid a shilling for it.

Nandi: A County Losing Hundreds of Millions Every Year

To understand the human cost of this inaction, consider Nandi County. With 37,595 hectares under tea as of 2023 (KNBS data; third-largest tea county behind Bomet and Kericho, representing ~16.5% of the national total), Nandi is one of Kenya’s most productive agricultural landscapes. And it is one of the most generous unpaid carbon contributors on the continent.

“At the mid-market carbon price, Nandi County alone is forfeiting Sh324.5 million every year — uncompensated, unclaimed, invisible in every budget and every policy paper.”

Carbon Price	Per Acre/Year (KES)	Nandi Tea+Coffee Total/Year
$10/tonne (low)	Sh 1,579	Sh 162.3 million
$20/tonne (mid)	Sh 3,158	Sh 324.5 million
$30/tonne (high)	Sh 4,737	Sh 486.8 million

Tea: 37,595 ha at 3 tCO₂/ha/yr. Coffee: 2,406 ha at 5 tCO₂/ha/yr. Avg KTDA smallholder 0.28 ha (Kaptumo factory data). KES at Sh130/USD. Bold = mid-market price. All per-acre figures are land-based and scale exactly with the area farmed—whether a smallholder’s 0.28 ha plot or a large estate’s hundreds of hectares.

The typical KTDA-registered smallholder in this region tends just 0.28 hectares. It is a tiny farm. And yet every single day it draws carbon out of the atmosphere and locks it into soil and biomass. Add Nandi’s 2,406 hectares under coffee (AFA 2023/24), a crop with even higher sequestration potential per hectare, and the county’s total foregone carbon income becomes impossible to ignore.

Sh3,158 per acre per year at the mid-market price may not sound transformative in isolation. But for a household earning at the margins of our highland economy—whether tending 0.28 hectares or a larger holding—it is compensation tied directly to the land stewarded and the bushes nurtured. It is a full term of school fees. It is two or three bags of fertilizer. It is a roof repaired before the long rains arrive rather than after the damage is done. Multiplied across Nandi’s thousands of tea and coffee growers, it represents a county-level transfer of wealth that flows silently out of Kenya and into the global atmosphere every single year, unacknowledged and unrewarded.

Our own Sinonin’s 20 acres of tea and a paltry 0,5 acres of coffee, we are losing roughly KShs 60k annually. Not a lot of money, you may say. But that is a third of what we spend on subsidised fertiliser per year!

And it is not only smallholders who are losing out. Eastern Produce Kenya (EPK), a major private estate operator in the Nandi Hills (estates including Sireet, Kapsumbeiywo, Kipkoimet, Kibabet, Sitoi, Chemomi, and Kepchomo etc), partners with some 14,000 outgrowers. Williamson Tea Kenya (Kapchorua and Tinderet farms in/near Nandi) holds ~2,130 hectares of tea estates. At mid-market prices, Sh16.6 million in annual uncompensated sequestration. Kakuzi PLC explicitly manages over 510 hectares of matured tea in the Nandi Hills, forfeiting a further Sh4 million a year.

These are named, registered, internationally linked companies with sustainability reports and ESG commitments. And not one is capturing the carbon value sitting in their own soil.

The same silent theft is playing out on an even larger scale across Kenya’s other tea heartlands.

Bomet County’s 45,375 hectares under tea are forfeiting Sh354 million every year at mid-market carbon prices; Kericho’s 40,981 hectares surrender Sh320 million; Kisii’s 8,444 hectares lose Sh66 million; and Nyamira’s 16,083 hectares give away another Sh125 million.

A combined Sh865 million in unclaimed carbon credits flowing out of these four counties alone, year after year, while the farmers who planted, pruned and protected every single bush receive not one shilling for the climate service they render to the world.

The National Reckoning: Kenya’s Sh3.26 Billion Annual Loss

Drill down to Nandi County from across the country and the numbers become extraordinary. At a conservative sequestration rate of three tonnes of CO₂ per hectare per year for tea and five tonnes for coffee, well below the potential of fully shade-integrated systems and fully supported by peer-reviewed agroforestry literature, Kenya’s ~229,200 hectares of tea and 113,503 hectares of coffee are collectively generating over 1.25 million tonnes of carbon sequestration annually.

Here is the value of that service at current voluntary carbon market prices:

Carbon Price	Tea Sector/Year	Coffee Sector/Year	KENYA GRAND TOTAL
$10/tonne (low)	Sh 893.9 million	Sh 737.8 million	Sh 1.63 billion
$20/tonne (mid)	Sh 1.788 billion	Sh 1.476 billion	Sh 3.26 billion
$30/tonne (high)	Sh 2.682 billion	Sh 2.213 billion	Sh 4.89 billion

Tea: 229,200 ha at 3 tCO₂/ha/yr (KNBS/Tea Board & USDA 2025 estimate). Coffee: 113,503 ha at 5 tCO₂/ha/yr (AFA 2025). KES at Sh130/USD. Conservative floor estimates—shade-integrated systems and verified credits can sequester and value significantly more.

“Sh3.26 billion every year — unaudited, unclaimed, given freely to a world that generated the emissions problem in the first place.”

These figures are derived from the most current official acreage data (KNBS National Agriculture Production Report 2025, AFA Yearbook 2025, USDA FAS 2025) and peer-reviewed sequestration literature, applied to live voluntary carbon market pricing. They are, if anything, conservative. Fully shade-integrated coffee agroforestry systems, practiced for generations in Murang’a, Nyeri, and Kiambu, Kericho, Nandi, Kisii and Bomet can sequester many times the five tonnes per hectare used here. The true annual loss to Kenya could be substantially higher.

A Market Already Moving Without Us

The global voluntary carbon market moves billions of dollars each year. Corporations across Europe, North America, and Asia face growing pressure to offset emissions through credible, verified credits. Agroforestry systems in the tropics, exactly the kind Kenyan smallholders already manage, are among the most credible sources. The buyers exist. The demand exists. Kenya is simply not at the table. The reasons are familiar: verification costs, certification frameworks designed for large concessions rather than smallholder plots, and middlemen with little incentive to add carbon accounting. The result is that Kenya exports tea at prices set in London and Dubai and exports carbon mitigation for free to the planet. Tea already accounts for 1.2 percent of our GDP.

Carbon revenues could add meaningfully to that, if we chose to claim them.

What Must Change

Fortunately, Kenya does not need new legislation to make this happen. The Climate Change Act 2016, as strengthened by the Climate Change (Amendment) Act 2023, together with the Climate Change (Carbon Markets) Regulations 2024 and the Kenya National Carbon Registry that became fully operational under NEMA in February 2026, already provide a complete and ready-to-use framework. These instruments explicitly authorize aggregated smallholder carbon projects, mandate fair benefit-sharing with farmers and outgrowers, prevent double-counting, and open the door to voluntary carbon markets—exactly the tools our tea and coffee landscapes have been waiting for.

Equally important, the Financing Locally-Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) programme — already channelling billions of shillings directly from the National Treasury to Kenya’s 47 counties and their Ward Climate Change Committees — provides the perfect grassroots vehicle. County Climate Change Units can now prioritise tea and coffee sequestration pilots in their annual plans, using FLLoCA grants to cover the costly work of measurement, verification and farmer training, while the carbon credits themselves deliver sustainable, ongoing income to the very smallholders who planted and protected every bush.

1. First, the Kenya Tea Development Authority and the Agriculture and Food Authority must formally incorporate carbon sequestration into their institutional mandates. With KTDA managing relationships with over 680,000 smallholders across 71 factories, it is uniquely positioned to design and pilot an aggregated carbon measurement programme at scale. Aggregation is the key: no individual farmer with 0.28 hectares can access the global carbon market alone, but a cooperative of fifty thousand can, and the infrastructure to aggregate already exists.
2. Second, Kenya’s climate finance strategy must treat agricultural carbon as a revenue stream, not a footnote in our Nationally Determined Contributions. Our tea and coffee landscapes can help Kenya exceed its Paris Agreement target, and earn hard currency doing so.
3. Third, we must halt the erosion of agroforestry practices. The stripping of shade trees from coffee farms for short-term yield is ecologically reckless and economically self-defeating. Shade-grown coffee commands premium prices and sequesters far more carbon. Every shade tree felled is carbon income surrendered.
4. Finally, the private sector must lead. Companies such as EPK, Williamson Tea, and Kakuzi, which publish sustainability commitments and ESG disclosures, should be capturing the carbon value in their own soil rather than leaving millions of shillings on the table each year.

The Farmer in the Tindiret Valley in Nandi

There is a woman I know at Kibukwo in Tindiret who has tended the same coffee trees for thirty years. She has never owned a car. She cooks with firewood from the edge of her farm. Her carbon footprint over a lifetime is a fraction of that of a single business-class passenger on a London-to-Nairobi business flight on KQ. And yet, through the patient stewardship of her shaded coffee garden, she has quietly sequestered tonnes of carbon that the rest of the world has benefited from at no charge.

KSh3.26 billion a year is not a small number. Spread across the smallholders of Nandi, Kericho, Bomet, Murang’a, Nyeri, and Kiambu, it is school fees paid on time.

It is fertilizer bought without a loan. It is a leaking roof fixed before the long rains.

Climate justice is not only about who is harmed by a warming planet. It is also about who is compensated for healing it. Kenya’s tea and coffee farmers—over 680,000 KTDA smallholders and hundreds of thousands more—have been healing it for generations.

It is long past time the world paid its debt.

[i]

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[i] Key sources: Tea planted area 227,777 ha (KNBS/Tea Board 2023), ~229,200 ha 2025 estimate; KTDA: 112,500 ha, 680,000+ farmers, 72 factories; Private estates: 116,000+ ha. Coffee: 113,503 ha total — estates 28,552 ha, smallholders/cooperatives 84,951 ha (AFA 2023/24). Nandi tea: 37,595 ha (KNBS 2023, 16.4% of national); Nandi coffee: 2,406 ha (AFA 2023/24). Williamson Tea: 2,130 ha Rift Valley estates; Kakuzi PLC: 510 ha Nandi Hills. Sequestration: 3 tCO²/ha/yr tea, 5 tCO²/ha/yr coffee (peer-reviewed agroforestry literature). Carbon prices $10–$30/tonne (voluntary carbon market 2024–25). KES at Sh130/USD.