More Bags, Not Better Prices: Kenya's KSh 41B Coffee Year Hides a Price SlideMore Bags, Not Better Prices: Kenya's KSh 41B Coffee Year Hides a Price Slide

The figures suggest the gain came from more coffee, not better prices, which makes it more fragile than the headline implies. Late-season prices have softened, and the published totals do not show how much of the money reaches the farmer.

Volume did the work

The Nairobi Coffee Exchange sold about 47 million kilogrammes of coffee in the year through 18 brokers, compared with 673,844 bags in 2024/25. Dividing the sale value by the bag count gives roughly KSh 53,244 ($409.84) a bag this year against KSh 52,831 ($406.66) last year, on Mwenendo's arithmetic.

A farmer's cherry did not fetch much more; there were simply more cherries to sell. Dollar figures here use the Central Bank of Kenya's rate of KSh 129.91 to the dollar.

The price jump itself came earlier. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics reports that the average auction price rose to KSh 936.67 ($7.21) a kilogramme in calendar 2025 from KSh 636.56 ($4.90) in 2024. This season's average works out lower, at about KSh 872 ($6.71) a kilogramme, although the two figures cover different periods and should not be read as a like-for-like fall. They do suggest that the steep gain was banked before this season, and that 2025/26 mostly held it.

A softer end to the season

By May the season's average price was KSh 43,780 ($337.00) per 50-kilogramme bag. In the week to 24 September, the exchange's weekly report put the average at KSh 38,106 ($294.46) per bag, and the sale on 29 September averaged KSh 38,140. That is about 13% below the May level.

The comparison has limits. A single week is not a season, and grades shift from week to week. But weekly volume also slipped, to 16,039 bags from 17,013 the week before, and the direction is plain.

Quality drives much of the spread. In that September week, AA coffee averaged KSh 44,566 ($343.05) a bag and AB KSh 43,143 ($332.10), while the lowest grades, T and UG2, averaged KSh 24,889 ($191.58) and KSh 20,556 ($158.23). A bag of UG2 earned less than half the price of AA, so a farmer's grade matters as much as the market's mood.

Who stands between the auction and the farmer

The auction total is the money the sale raises, not the money farmers receive. Between the two sit brokers, millers, marketing agents and cooperative societies, each taking a charge, and the published totals show none of those deductions.

The market is also concentrated. Alliance Berries sold 222,329 bags and New KPCU 137,284, together about 47% of the 770,034 bags on Mwenendo's arithmetic. That is less than the 61% share reported for the two firms, and the gap is another sign that the public numbers need a clearer account.

Mwenendo's earlier reporting on tea showed how much the last step matters: tea farmers' bonus rates ranged from KSh 12 ($0.09) to KSh 50 ($0.38) a kilogramme depending on the factory, and the KTDA payout showed the same pattern.

What the next season has to prove

Coffee Board of Kenya chairman Henry Kinyua said: "We are expecting improved prices in the year 2026/2027." That is an expectation, not a result, and the first sales of the new season will show whether late-September softness was a pause or a trend.

Two numbers would settle the argument. The first is the average price per bag in the opening auctions, against the KSh 43,780 season average. The second is the payment per kilogramme that societies actually make to farmers, which no published total currently reports. Until it appears, Kenya's coffee year can be described as a good one for sales volume, and an unproven one for the farmer who picked the cherry.