Kenya Policy Brief Cover

The Contribution of Livestock to the Kenyan Economy

Livestock specialists frequently argue that livestock production
is underrepresented in the GDP estimates of African nations. With
respect to Kenya this argument has been confirmed.
IGAD (Intergovemmental Authority on Development) and the
Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) completed in 2011 a
joint review of the importance of livestock to the Kenyan economy.
The study (IGAD LPI Working Paper No. 03-11) demonstrated that
livestock's contribution to Kenyan agricultural gross domestic product
(GDP) was more than two and a half times larger than the official
estimate for 2009, the most recent year for which there was complete
data. This increase over official estimates means that the livestock
contribution to agricultural GDP was only slightly less than that from
crops and horticulture, about $4.54 billion US dollars for livestock in
2009 versus $5.25 billion US dollars for arable agriculture.