During a recent visit to Nairobi, I accompanied a colleague to a dinner bringing together some of Kenya’s largest exporters. They sold everything from tea and avocados to flowers and leather, across East Africa, Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia.
What struck me was how the gathering was organized. The exporters were not there as competitors, but as ambassadors for Brand Kenya. As an African, I found that deeply encouraging. It reflected a recognition that, in global markets, these firms compete less against one another than against rivals from South Africa, Sri Lanka, Australia, and dozens of other countries.
Several exporters said it was the first time such a cross-section of Kenya’s export sector had gathered with the Ministry of Trade and Industry to discuss their challenges. They were not asking for subsidies or protection from foreign competition. They were asking the government to remove the obstacles limiting their competitiveness.
As someone who works on energy policy, I expected electricity to dominate the discussion. It did — but only as part of a broader conversation about competitiveness. Exporters otherwise spoke about freight costs, taxation, bonded warehouses in overseas markets, and coordination between government agencies and the private sector. They described a global marketplace where every additional dollar of cost reduces razor-thin margins.
When I spoke with one of Kenya’s largest avocado sellers, who ships fresh and frozen products, he told me energy accounts for roughly one-fifth of his operating costs. Horticulture exporters in Ethiopia and Egypt, he noted, benefit from significantly lower electricity costs, giving them an advantage before a single container reaches port.
Kenya’s industrial electricity tariffs remain well above those of several regional competitors and high by international standards. For energy-intensive operations — from tea factories running continuous crush-tear-curl production lines to cold-chain facilities — electricity is no longer simply an infrastructure issue. It is a competitiveness issue.
Sunripe Vertical Agro Managing Director Tiku Shah captured the challenge well: “If power costs go up, we can’t simply increase prices, because most exporters are locked into supply contracts.”
Kenya’s Association of Manufacturers, representing sectors such as steel, cement, and plastics, has similarly argued that reducing industrial power tariffs is essential to competitiveness.
The discussion in Nairobi reminded me that we often frame Africa’s industrialization challenge too narrowly. We debate power generation, ports, customs reform, and taxation as separate policy questions. Exporters do not experience them separately. A delay at the port can erase savings from cheaper electricity. Expensive power can eliminate the advantage of lower wages. Competitiveness is the cumulative outcome of the entire system working together.
The Kenyan experience shows that producing a quality avocado is no longer enough. The real contest is whether that avocado reaches Brussels or Shanghai at a lower delivered cost, with greater reliability, and better service than one from Australia, Morocco, or Peru. The energy question in Africa is not simply how much power the continent needs, but how much it costs. In global markets, every unnecessary dollar of cost reduces the likelihood that an African exporter wins the next order. For a region that needs to expand its exports, high energy tariffs have become a self-imposed competitive disadvantage.
African exports, even when targeting regional markets, do not exist in a vacuum. Their future will not be determined solely by what we grow or manufacture. It will be determined by whether we can build systems that consistently outperform our competitors. In that contest, energy is part of the strategy, not merely infrastructure.
W. Gyude Moore is Liberia’s former minister of public works and currently a distinguished fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub.