Kenya’s Milk Shortage Masks the Real Story Behind Every Cow

By Sheena Raikundalia

Kenya’s milk shortage has become the story of the moment. Supermarket chain Naivas has begun rationing shoppers to two packets of milk each. Formal deliveries to processors dropped 3.7 percent between June and July. Drought has withered pasture and feed, and dairy farmers are absorbing the cost.

It is a real crisis, and it deserves the attention it is getting. But there is a second story standing quietly behind every cow in the country, and almost no one is talking about it: manure.

A Cow Is a Factory, Not Just a Milk Machine

Most people think of a cow as a source of milk, meat, and perhaps leather. In truth, a cow is closer to a small biological factory, and one of its steadiest outputs is something farmers mostly treat as a nuisance to be shoveled away.

Kenya has roughly 18 million head of cattle. Even on conservative estimates, that herd generates more than 60 million tonnes of manure annually. That is not a rounding error. It is a raw material stream on an industrial scale, and right now, almost none of it is captured.

What Other Countries Have Already Built

Elsewhere, entrepreneurs and governments have figured out how to turn that stream into something valuable. India offers the clearest example: its government-backed Khadi Prakritik Paint initiative has developed, certified, and now commercially sells paint manufactured from processed cow dung.

Paint. From the very thing farmers can’t wait to get rid of.

The real opportunity here isn’t dung itself. It’s the mindset shift it represents – the willingness to look at a waste product and ask what else it could become.

The Fertilizer Math Kenya Can’t Ignore

Consider fertilizer. Kenya spent roughly Ksh 49 billion (US$376 million) importing fertilizer in 2024 alone – a substantial and recurring drain on foreign exchange reserves.

To be clear, cow dung cannot replace synthetic fertilizers like DAP or urea. It doesn’t deliver the same nutrient concentration, and no serious analysis would suggest otherwise. But there is a meaningful category between “imported chemical fertilizer” and “nothing at all”: organic material that returns nutrients to depleted soil and improves its long-term structure and health.

Run manure through a biodigester, and a single waste stream splits into two usable products: biogas for cooking or power, and biofertilizer for the fields. Companies including Sistema.bio and HomeBiogas are already deploying this technology in Kenya today. The dung from just two cows is enough to produce household cooking gas and a batch of biofertilizer – converting a disposal headache into both an energy source and an agricultural input, at the household level, without waiting for a government program to scale it.

Asking a Different Question

Agricultural policy debates tend to focus on scarcity: not enough fertilizer, not enough energy, not enough farmer income, not enough industrial raw materials.

That framing is understandable, but it may also be limiting. A more useful question might be this: what is Kenya already producing in enormous quantities that no one has bothered to build a market around?

Milk is just one output of a cow. It may be time to start valuing the others.

Sheena Raikundalia is an accomplished entrepreneur, former lawyer, government policy advisor, and angel investor with deep expertise across the legal, financial services, and impact investment sectors in Europe and Africa. She has played a pivotal role in advancing Africa’s technology and innovation ecosystems, leveraging a career that spans top-tier London law firms, leadership as Country Director of the UK-Kenya Tech Hub for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and her current position as Chief Growth Officer at agri-tech company Kuza One. Sheena is recognized for her strategic vision, commitment to fostering innovation, and strong advocacy for Africa’s growth potential in technology, entrepreneurship, and impact investment.