Ruto Blames Rising Demand for Milk Shortages as Supply Data Show a Different PictureRuto Blames Rising Demand for Milk Shortages as Supply Data Show a Different Picture

The disagreement is more than a debate over economic statistics. It affects households struggling to find familiar milk brands, farmers deciding where to sell their milk, and processors competing for raw supplies. The available figures do not establish that construction workers are responsible for the stockouts. They show that demand, farm production, collection and distribution all need to be examined before one explanation can be accepted.

What Ruto and Ndii are arguing

Speaking at the Industrialisation Summit in Nairobi on Wednesday, November 4, Ruto said annual milk production had risen from about 4.6 billion litres to 5.5 billion litres in 2025.

He also cited a 36% increase in milk-processing capacity and said about two million additional Kenyans had moved into employment, including 1.1 million in affordable housing. The remarks were reported by The Star.

The President was endorsing an argument made by Ndii at the NCBA Economic Forum on Tuesday. Ndii said increased incomes had allowed more lower-income households to buy milk and pointed to construction sites where contractors provide workers with milk.

The argument is that more people can now afford a product they previously bought less often. That could increase demand even when the country produces more milk overall. However, neither the President’s remarks nor the reports of Ndii’s explanation provide a measured estimate of how much milk construction workers consume or how much of the reported stockouts that demand explains.

What the official figures show

The latest available Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) Leading Economic Indicators dashboard records formal-sector milk intake at 77.1 million litres in August, down from 81.3 million litres in July. That is a monthly fall of about 5.1%.

The detailed KNBS table puts May intake at 88.9 million litres, June at 84.4 million litres, July at 81.3 million litres and August at 77.1 million litres. The series therefore shows a sustained decline over those four months, even though annual milk production increased in 2025.

KNBS reported in its 2026 Economic Survey that milk production rose by 3.5% to 5.5 billion litres in 2025. Marketed milk production increased by 11.5% to about one billion litres. These measures describe different parts of the dairy chain. Total production includes milk that may be consumed at home or sold outside formal channels, while formal intake measures milk recorded by processors.

That distinction matters. Higher annual production does not automatically mean more packaged milk is reaching supermarkets every week. The monthly figures also do not, on their own, prove that the national dairy herd produced less milk. They show that less milk was recorded entering the formal processing chain during the period.

Drought, feed costs and the route from farm to shelf

The Kenya Dairy Board has offered a different explanation for the shortages. In an interview published by the Daily Nation on October 30, its managing director, Dr William Kimutai Maritim, attributed the pressure largely to inadequate animal feed after poor rainfall. He said reduced fodder availability had affected production, while farmers were also changing where they sold their milk.

Some farmers have been selling directly to buyers who pay cash and offer better prices than processors. The Nation cited a Kiambu farmer selling milk at KSh80 per litre directly from her farm, compared with KSh50 per litre paid by her processor. That price difference gives farmers a clear incentive to redirect supplies when they can find buyers.

The Board also identified a distribution problem. According to the Nation interview, processors have increasingly favoured outlets that pay cash, including small shops and kiosks, because some supermarkets take longer to pay. That could help explain why a consumer finds empty shelves in a supermarket while milk remains available through other outlets, sometimes at higher prices.

The Board said Nairobi was the hardest-hit market, followed by Mombasa and Kisumu. It warned that supplies could begin stabilising within about a month if rainfall improved and fodder availability recovered. That was a conditional outlook, not confirmation that the shortage would end by a fixed date.

What the numbers do not yet tell us

The evidence points to several pressures operating at the same time: demand may be rising, formal processor intake has fallen in recent months, dry conditions have increased feed pressure, and farmers have more incentive to sell outside the formal chain when they can get paid sooner or earn more.

But there is no public breakdown in the material reviewed that quantifies milk consumed at affordable housing sites or demonstrates that this demand is large enough to account for supermarket stockouts. Nor do the available monthly processor figures measure every litre produced and traded informally.

The government’s demand explanation and the Dairy Board’s supply-and-distribution explanation are therefore not necessarily mutually exclusive. More people buying milk can tighten an already constrained market. But the claim that construction workers are a major cause needs evidence showing how much milk they consume and where those supplies come from.

For consumers, the immediate issue is availability and price. KNBS reported that fresh packaged milk prices rose by 6% in September, while ultra-high-temperature milk increased by 8%. For farmers, the shortage can mean better prices from direct buyers, but it can also expose them to uneven demand and less predictable markets. For processors, the challenge is securing enough raw milk and getting finished products to retailers that can pay.

Mwenendo previously reported that formal milk deliveries fell to 75 million litres in August, based on figures cited at the time. The latest KNBS dashboard records 77.1 million litres for the same month.

The difference highlights why the reporting must specify the dataset and measure being used rather than treating all milk-intake figures as interchangeable. Read our earlier report on Kenya’s falling milk supply.

The next test is whether the November data show formal deliveries recovering, whether supermarket supplies improve, and whether the Kenya Dairy Board can publish a clearer breakdown of production, informal sales, processor intake and distribution. Until then, rising national output alone cannot explain why shoppers are still struggling to find milk on some supermarket shelves.