Government Launches County Aggregation and Industrial Parks to Revolutionize Rural Economies
The Ministry of Industrialization, Trade and Enterprise Development has officially launched the County Aggregation and Industrial Parks (CAIPs) program, a landmark initiative designed to transform rural economies by establishing specialized industrial zones across all 47 counties. The ambitious program, unveiled by Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Miano, aims to address critical gaps in agricultural value chains, reduce post-harvest losses, and create sustainable manufacturing opportunities at the grassroots level. Each CAIP will serve as a centralized hub for aggregation, value addition, and manufacturing, tailored to leverage the unique economic strengths and raw materials of its host county.
The CAIPs program represents a KSh 12 billion investment in decentralized industrialization, with each park featuring modern storage facilities, primary processing units, quality control laboratories, and common manufacturing infrastructure. The parks are strategically designed to tackle the persistent challenge of post-harvest losses, which account for up to 30% of agricultural produce in some regions. For decades, our counties have produced abundant raw materials that were exported for processing elsewhere. The CAIPs program ends this economic leakage by ensuring value addition happens where production occurs, thereby creating wealth and jobs within our communities, CS Miano stated during the launch ceremony in Murang’a County.
County governments and private sector players have welcomed the initiative as a potential catalyst for regional economic transformation. The program includes a strong public-private partnership component, with the national government providing infrastructure while private investors bring in processing technology and market access. This is exactly what we need to unlock the economic potential of our agricultural hinterlands. By having aggregation and processing centers within our county, our farmers will get better prices for their produce, and our youth will find employment in these value-added industries, said Murang’a Governor Irungu Kang’ata. Agricultural cooperatives have particularly praised the program’s potential to strengthen their bargaining power and improve returns for smallholder farmers.
The long-term vision for the CAIPs program aligns with Kenya’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda, focusing on elevating the productivity of key agricultural value chains including dairy, cotton, leather, tea, coffee, and edible oils. The government projects that fully operational CAIPs will create over 100,000 direct jobs and stimulate numerous indirect employment opportunities across value chains. We are building an inclusive industrial economy that starts from the bottom up. Within five years, we expect to see significant reduction in post-harvest losses, increased export of processed goods, and sustainable industrial growth spread across all regions of our country, CS Miano affirmed. The success of this decentralized industrialization model could position Kenya as a leader in rural economic transformation across Africa.