# Beyond Oil: What the Iran and Ukraine Wars Teach Us About East Africa's Food Exports

This is the plain-text version of a research article published by FarmMoja at https://farmmoja.org/blog/beyond-oil-iran-ukraine-wars-east-africa-food-exports. It carries the full text, tables, figure descriptions and numbered sources of the web page.

- By Bradley Opere, Co-Founder, FarmMoja Limited (primary researcher and writer), with contributions from Kevin Kibet Mochama, Co-Founder and Managing Director. Data as of 3 October 2026.
- Published 3 October 2026. Revised 5 October 2026.
- Web page: https://farmmoja.org/blog/beyond-oil-iran-ukraine-wars-east-africa-food-exports
- Dataset (CSV): https://farmmoja.org/blog/data/beyond-oil-livelihoods-exposure.csv
- How to cite: Opere, B., with Mochama, K. K. (2026). Beyond Oil: What the Iran and Ukraine Wars Teach Us About East Africa's Food Exports. FarmMoja, October 2026. https://farmmoja.org/blog/beyond-oil-iran-ukraine-wars-east-africa-food-exports

**Standfirst:** Most accounts of these wars count barrels of oil. For East African agriculture the costs are counted in days of transit, missing insurance and young people's jobs. Original research from inside a Kenyan avocado export chain.

## What changed in the 5 October 2026 revision

- Introduction: the cost is now stated as jobs lost within agriculture across several value chains, with young people the most affected.
- Fertilizer: added the Abuja Declaration (2006) and the Nairobi Declaration (2024), and the point that fertilizer arriving three weeks after the planting rains is of no use until the next season.
- Sea and air: a note that all routes, maps and transit times are sea freight unless air is named, and why avocados travel by sea.
- Transit times: Mombasa to Rotterdam around the Cape is 41 to 54 days on FarmMoja bookings (37 to 45 days first reported); Mombasa to Jebel Ali was 10 to 12 days; Mombasa to Khor Fakkan is 12 to 18 days at best plus a standard five days overland to Jebel Ali.
- Freight: published surcharges are contract rates; spot ocean freight is almost $5,000 per reefer against about $3,800 on contract, a barrier to entry for first-time exporters.
- Insurance: the one variable that changed against last season is that cargo now sails without cover; the Afreximbank $10 billion facility has remained largely out of reach for smaller fresh-produce exporters.
- Gulf: Colombo absorbed Middle East-bound cargo early in the closure; competing origins Mexico and Peru now face about 51 days to the Gulf against about 35, which makes Gulf buyers more dependent on East African supply.
- Avocado: green-skin varieties (Fuerte, Pinkerton) have found their strongest demand in Turkish markets; Europe is served selectively, in windows when competing supply is lowest.
- Tea: added Iran (worth up to $43.7 million a year, exports down 40.7% in the first quarter of 2026) and Sudan (12th-largest buyer in 2024, Kenyan imports banned in March 2025).
- Flowers: Kenya pioneered sea-freight flowers under a 2022 framework with the Netherlands; the program was abandoned in 2024.
- China: methyl bromide fumigation and registration are non-tariff requirements; the 2024 list names 111 orchards, 23 packhouses and two fumigation facilities. The phrase saying FarmMoja had not completed the build was removed.
- India: Tanzania sells as the value origin, Kenya as the premium origin, under a 30% duty.
- The FarmMoja section is reframed as six recommendations. The grants recommendation now separates what grants pay for (public goods such as farmer capacity, compliance, skills and shared infrastructure) from what private capital funds (the trade), with the UK-funded SUED program as a further example.
- Counterpoints: the vegetable point now ends at the EU pesticide-residue interceptions; cooking oil is framed as an Asian price and an Asian policy; the fertilizer point adds farmer discouragement as a second-round effect.
- The Black Sea map is drawn at continental scale. Sources 119 to 133 are new.
- Language: the text was edited for plain wording and US spelling, section headings were renamed to say what each section contains, and the bolded lead-ins in the counterpoints became sub-headings. No fact, figure or source was added or removed in that edit.

## Key findings

- The Strait of Hormuz carries a quarter of the world's oil and a quarter of the world's urea; 26% of Kenya's fertilizer imports pass through it.
- The World Bank fertilizer index hit 209 in April 2026, its highest since 2022, in the month Kenya plants.
- Kenya's exports to the UAE fell 39.5% in the first four months of 2026, meat exports to the Gulf fell below 5% of normal, and 8 million kilograms of tea sat stranded in Mombasa.
- Cargo war-risk cover for Gulf voyages became voyage-by-voyage or unavailable, which turned an insurance gap into a working-capital gap for every exporter paying farmers at harvest.
- Between 175,000 and 300,000 export-linked livelihoods in Kenya's four most exposed chains sat in the path of the closure, most of the wage jobs among them held by young people.

When people ask what the wars in Ukraine and Iran have done to Africa, the answer usually begins with oil. The same two straits that carry the oil, the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, also decide what happens at a fertilizer depot in the North Rift, a tea warehouse in Mombasa, a flower farm in Naivasha, a slaughterhouse in Athi River, and a two-acre avocado orchard in Kericho. For East African agriculture the shock arrived twice, through what farmers buy and through what they sell, and the cost is jobs lost within agriculture across several value chains at once, with young people the most affected.

## Where most analysis starts: oil, gas and two chokepoints

**Figure: The two straits.**

*Counted in oil*

- A. Strait of Hormuz: About 20 million barrels of oil a day, roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil, a fifth of global LNG and close to a third of seaborne LPG.
- B. Bab el-Mandeb: Before the Houthi attacks, the Red Sea and Suez route carried about 12% of seaborne oil, 12 to 15% of world trade and a quarter to a third of all container traffic.

Where most analysis starts. The Strait of Hormuz carries about 20 million barrels of oil a day, roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil. The Red Sea and Suez route carried about 12% of seaborne oil before the Houthi attacks began in November 2023. Sea-freight routes unless marked as air.

*Counted in food*

- A. Strait of Hormuz: A quarter of world urea and 26% of Kenya's fertilizer pass through Hormuz.
- B. Beyond the Red Sea: Tea to Egypt, flowers and vegetables to Europe, and half of Kenya's wheat.
- C. The Gulf: 57% of Kenya's meat exports and 19% of its avocados go to the Gulf.

What most analysis misses. For Kenyan agriculture the same two straits carry inputs and exports: a quarter of world urea and 26% of Kenya's fertilizer pass through Hormuz, and 57% of Kenya's meat exports and 19% of its avocados go to the Gulf. Sea-freight routes unless marked as air.

On 28 February 2026, United States and Israeli strikes on Iran opened a new war, and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. The first numbers quoted were about fuel, with good reason. Hormuz carries about 20 million barrels of oil a day, roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil, a fifth of global LNG and close to a third of seaborne LPG [1][2][3]. The other strait, the Bab el-Mandeb at the mouth of the Red Sea, had already been under Houthi attack since November 2023; before those attacks the Red Sea and Suez route carried about 12% of seaborne oil, 12 to 15% of world trade and a quarter to a third of all container traffic [4][5].

Brent went from $72 to $118 a barrel in March 2026, the largest monthly rise on record, and peaked at $126 [6][7]. Hormuz traffic fell by about 95%, from roughly 100 ships a day to about five, and war-risk cover for a Gulf transit climbed to 7.5 to 10% of a ship's hull value, against 0.125% before the war [3][8]. Kenya felt it at the pump within six weeks: diesel went from KSh 166.54 a liter in March to KSh 242.92 in May, a 46% jump, and Treasury told Parliament the landed cost of diesel had risen more than 80% [9][10]. A 13 kg cooking-gas refill averaged about KSh 3,470 by May [11]. Most analysis stops at fuel, but for a farmer in Kericho it is the smallest of the three shocks, behind what the farm buys and what it sells.

## What most analysis misses: Africa's food system runs on imported inputs

**Figure: What Kenya buys: three routes into Mombasa.**

- A. Fertilizer, through Hormuz: About 26% of Kenya's fertilizer imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar the main nitrogen suppliers to the national subsidy program.
- B. Wheat, through the Red Sea: Kenya imports about 90% of its wheat, half of it from Russia.
- C. Cooking oil, across the Indian Ocean: Kenya imports more than 90% of its cooking oil, most of it palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia.

Kenya's dependence on each route. Kenya imports about 90% of its wheat and more than 90% of its cooking oil, and about 26% of its fertilizer imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Sea-freight routes unless marked as air.

The two wars reached African agriculture in different ways. The war in Ukraine hit what farmers buy, and the Gulf war hit both what they buy and what they sell.

### Fertilizer

Sub-Saharan Africa imports about 80% of its fertilizer [12]. Before 2022, Russia and Belarus supplied 41% of the world's traded potash and Russia 14% of its urea [13]. When the invasion came, the World Bank's fertilizer price index rose from 152 in 2021 to 236 in 2022, and the fertilizer research body IFDC estimated that fertilizer use in the region fell by as much as a quarter [14][13].

**Callout: What the fertilizer index means**

The World Bank fertilizer price index is one number for the world price of the five traded fertilizer commodities together: urea, DAP, TSP, potash and phosphate rock. It is published monthly in nominal US dollars with 2010 set equal to 100, so 200 means fertilizer costs twice its 2010 average. It moves with natural gas prices, because urea is made from gas, which is why the Gulf matters; it moves faster and further than food prices; and it reaches a farm with a lag, because dealers sell what they already stocked.

The Gulf war was the second blow. The Strait of Hormuz carries nearly a quarter of world urea exports, and about 26% of Kenya's fertilizer imports pass through it, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar the main nitrogen suppliers to the national subsidy program [15][16]. Within six weeks of the closure urea had passed $850 a tonne, up 80% on February, and the index hit 209 in April, its highest since 2022 [15][17]. FAO named Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Somalia, Egypt and Mozambique among the most exposed countries [18]. A Kisumu farmer reported paying about KSh 8,000 for a 50 kg bag of urea in March against roughly KSh 6,000 in January, and National Cereals and Produce Board depots ran short in the North Rift even as the subsidized price was cut to KSh 2,000 [16][19]. Prices have since fallen back: the index was 146 in August, with urea at $390 a tonne [20]. The damage came from the timing. The spike landed exactly on the long-rains planting window, when the fertilizer is applied.

The shock landed on a continent that was already short of fertilizer. In June 2006 African Union heads of state adopted the Abuja Declaration, resolving to raise fertilizer use from 8 kg of nutrients per hectare to at least 50 kg by 2015. By 2022 the average in sub-Saharan Africa was 17 kg, against a world average of 135 kg, and most countries remained far below the target [119]. The Nairobi Declaration of May 2024 renewed the commitment, with all 55 member states pledging to triple domestic production and distribution of certified fertilizer and to restore at least 30% of degraded soils by 2034 [120][121]. Two wars in four years have pushed both targets further away. Timing matters as much as price, since fertilizer that docks three weeks after the planting rains is of no use until the next season.

**Figure: World Bank fertilizer price index, 2021 to August 2026.**

- Bar chart of the World Bank fertilizer price index, where 2010 equals 100. 2021 average: 152. 2022 average, after the invasion of Ukraine: 236. April 2026, after the Hormuz closure and during Kenya's long-rains planting window: 209. August 2026: 146.

Two war spikes, one of them on the planting window. The index rose from 152 in 2021 to 236 in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine. It hit 209 in April 2026 after the Hormuz closure, its highest since 2022 and in the month Kenya plants, and was back at 146 by August. Annual averages for 2021 and 2022; monthly values for April and August 2026. The years 2023 to 2025 are not shown. Index: 2010 = 100.

### Wheat

Before the invasion Africa sourced 32% of its wheat imports from Russia and 12% from Ukraine; 25 countries took more than a third of their wheat from the pair [21]. Kenya imports about 90% of its wheat, 2.5 million tonnes in 2025/26, half of it from Russia [22]. The Black Sea Grain Initiative moved 32.8 million tonnes before it ended in July 2023, but only 12% of that went to Africa [23]. In August 2026 both ends of the corridor came under attack at once: no ships entered Greater Odesa in early August and all three grain terminals at Novorossiysk, Russia's main export port, stopped [24]. FAO's cereal price index hit 122.8 in September, up 17% on a year earlier [25].

**Figure: The Black Sea grain corridor.**

- A. Greater Odesa: No ships entered Greater Odesa in early August 2026.
- B. Novorossiysk: All three grain terminals at Novorossiysk, Russia's main export port, stopped.

Both ends at once. In August 2026 both ends of the Black Sea corridor came under attack at once: no ships entered Greater Odesa in early August and all three grain terminals at Novorossiysk stopped.

### Cooking oil

Ukraine normally supplies close to half of the world's sunflower oil exports [26]. Kenya imports more than 90% of its cooking oil, most of it palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, so the Ukraine effect reached Kenya through the world price and not through a missing cargo [27]. A liter of cooking oil cost KSh 358 in July 2026, the highest since the 2022 crisis peak of KSh 366 [28].

### What it did to food prices

The FAO Food Price Index reached 136.0 in September 2026, approaching a four-year high and 15% below its March 2022 peak, with FAO naming Hormuz and the Black Sea as causes [29]. Kenya's food inflation was 9.5% in September against a 6.8% headline rate [30]. The World Food Programme projected up to 45 million more people in acute food insecurity from the 2026 shock, almost exactly the 47 million it projected after the 2022 invasion [31][32].

## What changed at sea: routes, transit days and insurance

For an exporter of fresh produce the damage is counted in days. A tanker delayed three weeks loses money, while an avocado delayed three weeks is thrown away on arrival.

**Callout: All routes shown are sea routes**

The routes, maps and transit times in this article are sea-freight routes unless air freight is named. Avocados are a climacteric fruit: they are harvested mature but unripe, shipped under controlled atmosphere and ripened at destination, which is what makes a sea voyage possible at all. Over the past decade Kenya's avocado trade has been built on sea freight, for cost and for carbon: avocados are the main fresh product Kenya ships by sea, about 3,000 containers a year, and sea freight cuts emissions by about 85% against air [128]. Direct air routes to Europe existed before the disruption. They carried small off-season avocado volumes and, far more regularly, flowers and other highly perishable produce, which is why air freight appears in this article mainly in the flower and meat chains.

### Europe by the Cape route

When the Red Sea closed, Mombasa to Rotterdam went from 18 to 22 days through Suez to 41 to 54 days around the Cape of Good Hope on our own bookings, against the 37 to 45 days first reported, and forwarders warned of cold-chain breaks and higher rejection rates on arrival [33][34]. In 2024 about 96% of Asia-Europe container capacity went around the Cape [35]. Kenya's largest listed agricultural group, Sasini, shipped 71 containers of avocados in its 2024 financial year and 22 in 2025, cited the near-doubling of transit times, and put its avocado processing plant up for sale [36].

Separately, demand has grown on one lane while the others lengthened. Kenya's green-skin avocados, the Fuerte and Pinkerton varieties that make up 10 to 15% of a typical orchard, have found their strongest demand in Turkish markets, reached in about 30 days with two departures a month, and farmgate prices for export-grade green skins approached Hass prices last season [126][127]. Europe itself is still served, but selectively: exporters hold fruit for the windows when competing supply is lowest, and in our experience stricter acceptance on arrival makes those windows harder for smallholder fruit to hit [133].

### The Gulf route after Hormuz closed

The Gulf was Kenya's hedge: a direct Mombasa to Jebel Ali sailing took about ten days on the published schedule, and 10 to 12 on our own bookings [37]. When Hormuz closed, carriers dropped Jebel Ali from their rotations, 124 vessels carrying 168,000 containers were trapped inside the Gulf, and the ports on the Gulf of Oman side of the Hajar mountains, Khor Fakkan, Fujairah and Sohar, became landbridge gateways with cargo trucked 170 to 190 km over the mountains to Dubai [38][39][40]. In the first days of the closure carriers asked Sri Lanka's port authority for permission to offload Middle East-bound containers at Colombo, and over the first half of 2026 Colombo's throughput rose 11.9% while Jebel Ali's fell almost 60% [124][125]. Maersk still charges an emergency rate of $3,800 per refrigerated container on Gulf cargo, plus $1,000 for any container that transits Hormuz; MSC's war-risk surcharge on the same lane is $4,000 per reefer [41][42]. Four tankers were hit by projectiles in the strait on 28 and 29 September, one of them damaged within sight of Khor Fakkan, and the Joint Maritime Information Centre rates the Hormuz threat "severe" [43].

**Callout: Contract rates versus spot rates**

The surcharges quoted here are the rates carriers publish for clients with a contract. An exporter booking on the spot market, which is where a first-time exporter has to start, pays much more: almost $5,000 in ocean freight for a refrigerated container on the Gulf lane this season, against about $3,800 on contract, on the quotes we have seen. The gap works as a barrier to entry for first-time exporters.

**Figure: Kenya's export map, before and after.**

*Before the disruption*

- A. Europe by sea: Mombasa to Rotterdam through Suez: 18 to 22 days.
- B. The Gulf by sea: A direct Mombasa to Jebel Ali sailing: about ten days on the published schedule, 10 to 12 on our own bookings.
- C. By air: Kenyan perishables flew to Europe and Asia through the Doha and Dubai hubs. Direct air routes to Europe also existed, used mainly for flowers and other highly perishable produce and for small off-season avocado volumes.
- D. Asia by sea: Across the Indian Ocean to Singapore and on to China, touching neither strait.

Before. Mombasa to Rotterdam took 18 to 22 days through Suez, and a direct sailing from Mombasa to Jebel Ali took about ten days. Sea-freight routes unless marked as air.

*October 2026*

- A. Europe by sea: Around the Cape of Good Hope: 41 to 54 days on our own bookings.
- B. The Gulf by sea: Jebel Ali calls suspended. Ships call at Khor Fakkan, 12 to 18 days at best on our bookings, and cargo is trucked 170 to 190 km over the mountains, a standard five days overland to Jebel Ali.
- C. By air: Gulf airspace closures removed the Doha and Dubai hubs. Flower tonnage rerouted via Istanbul rose over 100% to Amsterdam and Oslo.
- D. Asia by sea: Unchanged. The CMA CGM service from Mombasa transships at Singapore and quotes 48 days to Qingdao.

After. Mombasa to Rotterdam takes 41 to 54 days around the Cape on our own bookings, the Gulf is reached through Khor Fakkan and a road over the Hajar mountains, flowers fly through Istanbul, and the line to Singapore and China is unchanged. Sea-freight routes unless marked as air.

### The Red Sea reopening, as announced and as sailed

**Callout: What the carriers announced and what the ships are doing**

In September the major carriers announced a return to Suez. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd moved four more Asia-Europe services through the canal, COSCO sent a 24,000-container ship through on 16 September, and container tonnage through Suez in the first eight months of 2026 was up 54% on 2025 [44][45]. The carriers' own notices qualify this. Maersk's return "will remain dependent on the ongoing stability in the Red Sea area and the absence of any escalation"; MSC is returning "on a service-by-service basis" with the right to divert "individual voyages" [45][46]. The services named are Asia to Europe; neither MSC nor CMA CGM has published a Suez routing for its East Africa to Europe services, and our own bookings from Mombasa still show the Cape [46][47]. Of 215 Suez transits by the big western carriers since March, only ten broadcast their position; the rest sailed with transponders off [48].

On 11 and 12 August a cargo ship was struck twice in the Bab el-Mandeb and six crew were killed, the first deadly attack there in a year; on 24 August a Saudi tanker was hit by a ballistic missile off Yanbu; in mid-September the Houthis took Mocha and Perim Island, completing their control of Yemen's Red Sea coast, 20 km from Africa [49][50][51]. The 1 October maritime advisory rates the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb threat "substantial", with further attacks "a strong possibility", and ships are queuing for naval escorts the European mission cannot supply [43][52]. Maersk has already reversed once: it went back through Suez in February 2026 and returned to the Cape within a month [53]. An exporter cannot plan a harvest around a reopening that depends on no further attacks and that a carrier can reverse within a month.

### Cargo insurance

Cargo war-risk cover, the policy on the fruit and not on the ship, is the least visible cost and the one that stops a shipment. It was repriced within days of the strikes: underwriters issued 48-hour and seven-day cancellation notices, and war-zone cargo rates rose to about 1% of shipment value against a normal 0.05 to 0.2% [54]. Annual cargo war policies for the Gulf stopped being written at all; cover became "voyage-by-voyage basis only" [55]. Lloyd's Joint War Committee added Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar to its listed areas in March, which triggers the right to cancel or reprice [56].

> "In our own correspondence this season, cover for consignments into the Gulf was either unavailable or quoted at levels that made the shipment uneconomic." (FarmMoja)

Compared with last season, our own program has the same orchards, the same fruit, the same buyers and the same carriers. The two things that changed are a longer transit and cargo that now sails without cover.

A bank will not lend working capital against an uninsured cargo; a buyer will not pay in advance for fruit that may never clear a strait. For an exporter whose growers are paid at harvest and whose buyer pays on arrival, the insurance gap becomes a working-capital gap, and the working-capital gap decides whether the next container is packed. Afreximbank's $10 billion Gulf crisis facility and the African Development Bank's warning that Africa's trade-finance gap could widen to over $86 billion by 2027 show the same problem at continental scale [57][58]. The Afreximbank program is built around essential imports and around energy and minerals exporters, and it is delivered through corporates and lenders, so for smaller fresh-produce exporters it has remained largely out of reach [57].

**Figure: From insurance to the next container.**

- Cargo war-risk cover: Voyage-by-voyage only, or unavailable.
- The lender: A bank will not lend working capital against an uninsured cargo.
- Working capital: Growers are paid at harvest; the buyer pays on arrival.
- The next container: The working-capital gap decides whether it is packed.

The chain breaks at the lender. A bank will not lend working capital against an uninsured cargo, so the insurance gap becomes a working-capital gap, and the working-capital gap decides whether the next container is packed.

| Lane | Before disruption | October 2026 | What it costs a reefer of avocados |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Mombasa to Rotterdam | 18 to 22 days via Suez | 41 to 54 days via the Cape on our bookings; carriers announcing a conditional return to Suez on Asia-Europe services only | Three to five extra weeks of fruit age; Sasini fell from 71 to 22 containers |
| Mombasa to Jebel Ali | 10 to 12 days direct | Jebel Ali calls suspended; ship to Khor Fakkan, then overland across the Hajar mountains to Jebel Ali and Dubai | 12 to 18 days to Khor Fakkan at best, plus a standard five days overland; $3,800 to $4,000 in emergency surcharges on contract, and almost $5,000 in ocean freight on the spot market |
| Insurance | Hull war risk 0.125% per transit; annual cargo war cover routine | Hull cover 7.5 to 10%; cargo cover voyage-by-voyage or unavailable | Roughly $4,000 to $5,000 added to a container that grosses $28,000 to $35,000, before the cost of capital |

## Kenya's perishable exports: what used to go, and what happens now

Kenya's horticulture earnings fell from $1.21 billion in 2023 to $1.06 billion in 2024, and the Principal Secretary for Agriculture blamed Red Sea rerouting [59]. The Netherlands alone takes about 35% of horticulture value; the United Arab Emirates is the third market [60]. Kenya's exports to the UAE went from over KSh 101 billion in 2024 to KSh 77.8 billion in 2025, then fell 39.5% year on year in the first four months of 2026, hitting a 33-month low in April before recovering in July [61][62][63]. Exports to the Middle East as a whole fell 12% in 2025 to KSh 144 billion, and to Far East Asia by 14%, before the Hormuz closure [64]. The Trade Cabinet Secretary put KSh 164.6 billion a year of Middle East exports at risk in April [65].

**Table: five export chains, one by one.** On the web page this table is shown as tabs: Flowers, Tea, Meat, Avocado, Vegetables.

| Value chain | Scale and exposure | What the wars did | The mechanism |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Cut flowers | KSh 110 bn in 2025, 62% of horticulture value; about 70% to Europe, 13% of value to the Gulf [66][67] | $4.8 m lost in three weeks of March 2026 in perished stock and price cuts; air freight from $3.10 to $5.00 per kg; a 30% capacity shortfall; up to 50,000 jobs at risk; the sea-freight flower program that Kenya pioneered under a 2022 framework with the Netherlands, which had about 5% of flower exports moving by sea against a target of 50% by 2030, abandoned in 2024 after the Red Sea closed [68][69][66] | Gulf airspace closures removed the Doha and Dubai hubs that carry Kenyan perishables to Europe and Asia; flower tonnage rerouted via Istanbul rose over 100% to Amsterdam and Oslo; flowers are also less forgiving than fruit on a long voyage, because every day at sea comes off the vase life [70] |
| Tea | 652.8 m kg, KSh 186.9 bn in 2025; Pakistan 35%, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran in the top ten; Middle East 20 to 25% of volume; Iran alone worth up to $43.7 m a year; Sudan was the 12th-largest buyer in 2024, at 10.7 m kg worth KSh 2.3 bn [71][72][73][123][122] | 8 m kg stranded at Mombasa in March 2026, losses about $8 m a week; tea exports to Iran down 40.7% in the first quarter of 2026; Pakistan and Egypt cargo rerouted around the Cape; Sudan, already at war, banned Kenyan imports through all its ports in March 2025, closing a Red Sea market a year before the Gulf one [74][123][122] | Tea is Kenya's largest Gulf and Red Sea export by volume, and both routes closed at once; Iran and Sudan were lost for reasons a rerouted ship cannot fix |
| Meat and live animals | $145 m in 2024, up from $75 m in 2021; sheep and goat meat 90% of it; UAE 57%, Bahrain 12%, Kuwait 12%, Iran 7%; the Gulf takes 85% of livestock and 69% of meat exports [75][76] | Daily export volumes fell from about 200 t to 5 to 15 t, below 5% of normal, in the Ramadan window; six licensed export slaughterhouses at near-zero capacity; Treasury estimated KSh 250 m a week lost; air freight from $1 to $1.50 per kg to $3 to $3.50 [77][76] | Chilled meat flies through the Gulf hubs that closed; export-grade lamb in Kajiado fell from KSh 10,000 to KSh 4,000 a head, and the trade supports pastoralist households whose income is more than 95% livestock [78][79] |
| Avocado | 127,000 t ($158 m) in 2024; Netherlands 24%, UAE 19%, Spain and France 11% each in 2025 [80] | USDA cut its 2025 estimate to 121,000 t, citing premature harvesting, stricter export rules and shipping disruption, and notes Cape routing "could nearly double transit times"; Sasini abandoned its integrated export model; exports to China up 137% in 2025 and 63% in May to August 2026 [80][36][81] | A sea leg of 41 to 54 days eats the shelf life Kenyan Hass needs to compete with Peru in Europe; then the Gulf short route closed too; air freight, always a thin-margin option for avocados, became close to impossible as rates rose and capacity shrank, and that fed straight into the prices exporters could pay at the farm gate |
| French beans and vegetables | KSh 23.4 bn in 2024, KSh 16.1 bn in 2025 [82] | Down 31% in 2025 and 68% over two years | Mostly EU pesticide-residue interceptions, not war: see the counterpoints below |

Kenya's Gulf trade was built as the fast, short-transit alternative to Europe, and in 2026 it broke first. The damage lands hardest on the most perishable and most labor-intensive chains, which is where young Kenyans work. Every closure has also moved a route: Istanbul instead of Doha for flowers, Khor Fakkan instead of Jebel Ali for fruit, the Cape instead of Suez for tea, and Asia instead of Europe for avocados.

## Asia, and the routes that avoid both straits

A ship leaving Mombasa for Singapore crosses the Indian Ocean and touches neither Hormuz nor the Bab el-Mandeb [83][84]. That geography is why Kenya's trade diplomacy with Asia, slow for a decade, suddenly matters for a farmer.

### China

Kenya signed a fresh-avocado phytosanitary protocol with China in January 2022 and shipped the first fruit that August, with 15 orchards and nine packhouses approved at launch [85]. Volumes have swung: 4,300 t in 2023, under 2,000 t in 2024, then up 137% in 2025 [86][87][80]. On 24 March 2026, less than a month after the strikes on Iran, Kenya signed a China-Kenya Early Harvest Arrangement giving zero-tariff treatment on 100% of tariff lines, in force from 1 May 2026 under China's wider zero-tariff policy for African countries [88][89]. In the four months after it took effect, Kenyan avocado shipments to China rose 63% to 3,760 t [81].

Growing that volume is harder than the tariff change suggests, because China's requirements differ in kind from those of Europe or the Gulf. Only Hass qualifies. Every orchard and every packhouse must be registered with both KEPHIS and China's General Administration of Customs (GACC), so a smallholder-sourced chain has to register and audit hundreds of individual orchards rather than one packhouse. Growers must run a documented integrated pest management plan against nine named pests, three of them fruit flies, and consignments must be fumigated with methyl bromide under KEPHIS supervision before departure, a treatment that neither Europe nor the Middle East requires and one that shortens shelf life [117][118]. Few Kenyan packhouses can carry out chemical fumigation safely on site: the 2024 registration list names 111 orchards, 23 packhouses and two fumigation treatment facilities for the whole country, in a sector of more than 150,000 growers [129][108]. GACC inspects 2% of each batch, with a minimum of 1,200 fruit, and a single interception can suspend a packhouse [118]. On top of the compliance cost sits the transit: the CMA CGM service from Mombasa transships at Singapore and quotes 48 days to Qingdao, a Cape-detour length of voyage for a Hass avocado, and the main reason the 2024 shipments fell 80%, a drop partly attributed to quality and maturity complaints [90][91][87]. Chinese buyers also trade on different terms, with less of the consignment and advance-payment practice Kenyan exporters know from the Gulf and Europe. The market is open and the tariff is gone; what remains is a compliance and cold-chain build that most Kenyan exporters have not yet completed. These are non-tariff requirements, set out in a published protocol, and they can be met, as the registered orchards and packhouses show. With the tariff at zero, they are where the cost of access now sits.

### Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong

In November 2025 Kenya and Malaysia exchanged four agreements that Kenyan reporting says give tea, coffee, flowers, avocados and beef duty-free access; the underlying instrument has not been published and the avocado phytosanitary protocol that Malaysia audited in 2022 has not been confirmed as concluded [92][93]. Trade is small but moving: Kenyan avocado exports to Malaysia doubled from 369 t in 2023 to 633 t in 2024, Singapore took 384 t and Hong Kong 72 t [94]. Singapore's value is as the transshipment hub on every Mombasa to Asia rotation and as a strict, predictable regulator: a licensed importer, a permit per consignment, pesticide-residue compliance and producer labeling [95]. For a Kenyan exporter the Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong corridor is useful mainly as a route, since Port Klang and Singapore sit on the way to China and fruit cleared for one is halfway cleared for the others. The rest of the region is moving the same way as China: Malaysia's auditors inspected Kenyan orchards and packing facilities before any access was agreed, and India requires fumigation or cold treatment [93][96]. A registration and treatment build made for one Asian market is becoming a requirement for the others.

### India

India approved Kenyan avocados in August 2023 after five years of talks, with a 30% duty and a fumigation or cold-treatment requirement [96]. Indian imports doubled to about 19,300 t in 2025, but Tanzania supplies roughly 90% of them, helped by duty-free access and a ten-day transit; Kenya fills the early and late windows [97]. In our reading the duty sorts the two origins: Tanzania sells to India as the value origin, and Kenya, with deeper packhouse infrastructure and stronger regulatory institutions, has to sell as the premium one. Kenya and India opened trade-agreement negotiations in January 2026 and held a joint trade committee in Nairobi in April [98][99]. A new weekly Interasia service linking Nhava Sheva, Mundra, Dar es Salaam and Mombasa starts in mid-October 2026 [100].

### Where this leaves Kenyan exporters

Asia is a real third route, and the zero-tariff arrangement with China is the most valuable market-access change Kenya has had since the EU Economic Partnership Agreement. In 2025, before Hormuz, Kenya's exports to Far East Asia nevertheless fell 14% [64], and the Trade Cabinet Secretary said in April that the crisis was limiting access to Asia as well, through lost Gulf air hubs and higher freight and insurance [65]. The route exists, but the exporters trying to use it are doing so without insurance and with thin working capital.

## Jobs at risk across the value chain

Nobody publishes a count of Kenyan jobs lost to the Hormuz closure. What exists is sector employment on one side and export destination shares on the other. Putting them together gives a first-order estimate of livelihoods exposed, which is not the same as jobs lost.

### How the estimate is built

For each value chain, livelihoods at risk = L × s × d, where L is the number of livelihoods in the chain from farm to port (farmers; hired harvest labor; aggregators and collection-center staff; transporters; packhouse graders and processors; quality, phytosanitary and documentation staff; forwarders and clearing agents), s is the share of the chain's output sold through the disrupted corridor (the Gulf for Hormuz; Europe and Egypt for the Red Sea), and d is a duration factor from 0 to 1 for the share of the season affected. The table applies s only, so d = 1, which is the full-season, worst-case reading; a three-month disruption in a twelve-month chain would scale the figures by roughly a quarter. L comes from sector bodies, s from export statistics, and the national frame from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics: 354,500 formal wage jobs in agriculture in 2025, roughly 10.7 million people working in agriculture in total on the ILO modeled share of 46%, 84% of all employment informal, and about 60% of young people engaged in agricultural value chains [101][102][103][104].

**Table: exposure-weighted livelihoods.** Livelihoods at risk = L x s x d. The same table can be downloaded as CSV: https://farmmoja.org/blog/data/beyond-oil-livelihoods-exposure.csv

| Chain | Livelihoods in the chain (L) | Share through disrupted corridor (s) | Exposure-weighted livelihoods | What has been reported |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Cut flowers | 200,000 direct jobs (industry figure); KEPROBA cites up to 500,000 direct and 2 million indirect [105][106] | 13% of value to the Gulf; about 70% to Europe, much of it via Gulf air hubs [67][66] | 26,000 on the Gulf share alone; 26,000 to 50,000 once hub disruption is included | Kenya Flower Council: up to 50,000 jobs at risk; some Gulf-dependent farms lost up to 75% of revenue [66] |
| Tea | About 600,000 KTDA smallholders, plus estate and factory workers (not counted here) [107] | 20 to 25% of volume to the Middle East; a further 15% to Egypt via the Red Sea [73][72] | 120,000 to 150,000 farmer-equivalents on the Middle East share; up to 240,000 including Egypt | 8 m kg stranded, about $8 m a week lost in March [74] |
| Avocado | More than 150,000 growers, 70% small-scale, in 42 counties [108] | 19% to the UAE; about 51% to EU markets reached via the Red Sea or the Cape [80] | 28,000 farmer-equivalents on the Gulf share; a further 77,000 exposed to Europe transit times | 2025 exports revised down to 121,000 t; one major exporter cut containers by 69% [80][36] |
| Meat and live animals | 350,000-plus pastoralist households in the national livestock program; six licensed export slaughterhouses [79][76] | 85% of livestock and 69% of meat exports go to the Gulf [76] | Not estimable as a count: export is a minority share of pastoral sales, but the export price sets the market | One slaughterhouse went from 10,000 to under 1,000 animals a day; small-stock sales in Kajiado fell 40% and export-grade lamb lost 60% of its value [109][78] |

### How to read the table

Taken at face value, somewhere between 175,000 and 300,000 export-linked livelihoods in Kenya's four most exposed chains sat directly in the path of the 2026 closure, before counting the people who supply them. This is a ceiling rather than a count. It assumes the whole season is lost, it counts a farmer who sells a quarter of her crop to the Gulf as a quarter of a livelihood, and it does not net off the rerouting that has already happened. It also understates the people most exposed, because the wage jobs at the packhouse, in the cold store, on the harvest crew and at the clearing agent are the first to go when a container is not packed, and those jobs are held mainly by young people. A KNBS labor-force module on horticulture and livestock export chains by age and task would turn this estimate into a measurement, and it does not yet exist.

## Six recommendations from our 2026 season

FarmMoja is a Kenyan avocado company built over ten years: a certified Hass nursery in Kericho, a partner-grower network of more than 3,000 smallholder farms across the western Rift Valley, a 100-plus-acre commercial orchard in Narok, and an export operations unit shipping to destinations across Europe and the Middle East. The company works with partners including the UK-funded CASA program, the Mastercard Foundation's Africa Works program, and the Kühne Climate Center with Wageningen University, whose 2025 postharvest assessment of Kenya's avocado chain cited the model as a notable first-mile intervention [110]. We are running the 2026 season inside everything described above, and the six recommendations that follow come out of it. They are addressed to other exporters in the same position, and to the funders and researchers who work with them.

### Treat market choice as route choice

With Europe still a Cape detour for most of the season and Peru's peak flooding Rotterdam from June, we committed the 2026 program to the Gulf, one to two containers a week on a consignment basis with our buyer in Dubai, and declined fixed-price, cash-in-advance offers from Asia in favor of a relationship we can build on. We made both decisions knowing the strait was closed. An exporter choosing between a long certain route and a short uncertain one should ask which market still pays for fruit of the age it will arrive at.

The closure has one advantage for East African fruit in the Gulf. Mexico and Peru, the main competing origins in that market, ship through the Mediterranean and Suez, and on the transit times quoted to us their voyage has gone from about 35 days to about 51. A Gulf buyer who needs fruit of a workable age is more dependent on East African supply now than before the closure. Choose the market each season by the age the fruit will be on arrival, and by who else can still reach it.

### Ship to the port outside the strait

The carrier's UAE call now lands at Khor Fakkan on the Gulf of Oman, outside Hormuz, and the fruit is trucked over the Hajar mountains to Dubai. Our bookings show 12 to 18 days Mombasa to Khor Fakkan at best, followed by a standard five days to move the container overland to Jebel Ali, and we now treat the Khor Fakkan arrival date rather than the sailing date as the controlling date, so that two containers never land on the same buyer in the same week after a vessel amendment. Plan every Gulf booking around the arrival date at the port outside the strait, and add the overland days before promising a delivery date.

**Figure: Outside the strait: Khor Fakkan and the road to Dubai.**

12 to 18 days, then five more overland. The carrier's UAE call now lands at Khor Fakkan on the Gulf of Oman, outside Hormuz, and the fruit is trucked over the Hajar mountains to Dubai. Our bookings show 12 to 18 days Mombasa to Khor Fakkan at best, followed by a standard five days to move the container overland to Jebel Ali.

### Harvest and grade for the longer voyage

The Middle East specification is 22 to 24% dry matter. Because every extra day at sea raises the risk of lenticel damage and black patches, we harvest only from orchards tested at 22% and above, grade to Class 1 tolerances per pallet, and bring the independent inspector in at the start of packing rather than the end. Rift Valley fruit testing at 18% stays on the tree until it matures, in line with the Agriculture and Food Authority's maturity enforcement. We set the harvest standard for the longest transit the fruit might face.

### Plan the season around working capital, because insurance decides it

Growers are paid at harvest; a consignment sale pays after arrival and inspection. A longer or less certain transit stretches that gap, and an uninsurable cargo means no lender will bridge it on commercial terms alone. We felt the disruption in our cash position before we felt it in freight costs. Exporters should build the season plan around the cash cycle first and container volumes second, and lenders and funders should treat cargo insurance as part of the financing question.

### Pair grants with private capital, and be clear what each pays for

We recommend combining grant or concessional capital with commercial working-capital debt in one structure. The grant pays for the public good, the part no single exporter can recover from one season's margin: training and certifying thousands of smallholders, registering and auditing their orchards for new markets, building the skills of a young team, and the shared first-mile and packhouse infrastructure that a whole growing region uses. The private capital funds the trade itself, the fruit, the freight and the working-capital cycle, and is repaid from sales. Used this way, the grant buys a public outcome and draws private capital in behind it, and the trade itself still has to pay its own way.

Where a grant also takes the first loss, the logic is that of first-loss and mezzanine instruments: a tranche that takes the first hit lets a bank lend where it otherwise would not [111][112]. There is a track record for this outside our own chain. Aceli Africa's incentive model has mobilized $10 of private lending for every $1 of subsidy across 5,576 agri-SME loans, 63% of them to first-time borrowers [113]; AgDevCo structured $8 million of mezzanine debt for a Kenyan avocado orchard around a three-to-four-year maturity curve [114]; in August 2026 IFC launched Africa's first catalytic first-loss guarantee with Equity Bank and KCB, expecting to mobilize $120 million from $35 million of risk capital [115]; and the UK-funded Sustainable Urban Economic Development program reports that £8 million of seed funding brought in £48 million of private capital and supported more than 10,000 jobs, with a packhouse for avocado and passion fruit in Eldoret among its projects [130][131]. Capital-heavy facilities such as packhouses and processing lines are where the pairing matters most, because the asset serves many farmers and outlasts any one season. When market forces become this debilitating, smallholder-sourced chains have to be cushioned, and the cushion that preserves the commercial discipline of the chain is grant money that sits alongside private capital rather than replacing it. We are building the 2026 season with partners on that basis.

**Figure: The capital stack.**

- Private capital: commercial working-capital debt: Funds the trade itself, the fruit, the freight and the working-capital cycle, and is repaid from sales.
- Grant or concessional capital: Pays for the public good: farmer training and certification, orchard registration, skills and shared infrastructure. It can also take the first loss.
- $10 for every $1: Aceli Africa's incentive model has mobilized $10 of private lending for every $1 of subsidy across 5,576 agri-SME loans, 63% of them to first-time borrowers [113].
- $8 million: AgDevCo structured $8 million of mezzanine debt for a Kenyan avocado orchard around a three-to-four-year maturity curve [114].
- $120 million from $35 million: In August 2026 IFC launched Africa's first catalytic first-loss guarantee with Equity Bank and KCB, expecting to mobilize $120 million from $35 million of risk capital [115].
- £48 million from £8 million: The UK-funded Sustainable Urban Economic Development program reports that £8 million of seed funding brought in £48 million of private capital and supported more than 10,000 jobs [130].

Public money buying a public outcome, and drawing private capital in behind it. The grant pays for the public good and can take the first loss; private capital funds the trade. The diagram is illustrative and not to scale.

### Build the young team that does the adapting

The agronomists surveying orchards for dry matter, the aggregators collecting fruit from more than a hundred farms to fill one container, the packhouse crew grading to Class 1, the person rebuilding a booking against a carrier amendment, and the one reconciling the phytosanitary certificate, certificate of origin and invoice for a buyer's verification are the jobs trade disruption creates. They are skilled, portable across Kenya's horticulture sector, and in our operation they are held largely by people under thirty. Treat that team as the core of an exporter's resilience, and fund its training as deliberately as the cold chain. When a route closes, this is the team that reroutes the season.

A single exporter cannot reopen Hormuz, insure its way around a 7.5% war-risk premium, or wait 54 days for Rotterdam. What it can do is choose the market whose chokepoint is least broken this month, hold quality to the standard the longer transit demands, and structure its capital so that a season survives the strait.

## Counterpoints: what the wars did not cause

**Callout: The case against our own argument**

Our research shows that a resilience story which blames geopolitics for everything does not hold up. Several of the largest losses in Kenyan agriculture over the same period have nothing to do with either war. The war effects are dated and measurable, and they sit on top of structural problems that were already there.

### The vegetable collapse is regulatory

Kenya's fresh vegetable export earnings fell from KSh 23.4 billion in 2024 to KSh 16.1 billion in 2025, 68% over two years, because of European Union pesticide-residue interceptions on beans and peas, not shipping [82][116].

### Cooking oil is an Asian price and an Asian policy

Kenyan households cook mostly with palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia, not with sunflower oil. The 2026 rise in Kenyan cooking-oil prices tracks Malaysian output, Indonesia's biodiesel mandate and Kenya's own import duty, with the Ukraine sunflower shortfall as a background price effect [27]. Producer-country policy moves the price as much as any strait does: at the height of the Ukraine shock, in April 2022, Indonesia halted palm oil exports for almost a month to protect its own consumers [132].

### Fertilizer prices have already fallen back

The April 2026 spike to a World Bank index of 209 was real and landed on the planting window, but by August the index was 146 and urea was $390 a tonne, close to 2025 levels [17][20]. The lasting damage is to the season that was planted at the peak, not to the price today. There is also a second-round effect that the price does not show. Even with the subsidized bag cut to KSh 2,000 [19], farmers who lost a season are slow to plant again: traveling through Narok toward Kericho this season we passed large fields left unplowed. A cheaper bag does not by itself bring a discouraged farmer back, and next season's planted area may be smaller for it.

### Avocado quality problems are home-grown

USDA's downward revision of Kenya's 2025 exports cites premature harvesting and stricter export rules alongside shipping; the 80% fall in shipments to China in early 2024 was partly attributed to quality and maturity [80][87]. Longer transits punish immature fruit, but some of the fruit was immature first.

### Not all of Kenya's Middle East exposure runs through Hormuz

Pakistan, Kenya's largest tea buyer, is reached across the Arabian Sea without transiting either strait; the March disruption to Pakistan-bound tea came from vessel rotations and port congestion, not from a closed route [74].

### Exports to Asia fell before the war

Kenya's exports to Far East Asia dropped 14% in 2025, so the Asian pivot starts from a declining base rather than a rising one [64].

### The Red Sea evidence cuts both ways

We could not confirm an attack on a merchant ship in the Red Sea between 15 September and 3 October 2026; the case that the route is not safe rests on the August attacks, the Houthi capture of the Bab el-Mandeb coast, the carriers' own conditional language, and the fact that most of them transit dark [43][48][49][51]. That is strong, but it is not the same as a closed strait.

## What it means for young people and for policy

For anyone designing youth programs in food systems, three conclusions follow. First, resilience means being able to switch routes and markets, as one alternative is not enough. Kenya's Gulf route was the alternative to Europe, and it broke first. The exporters who have survived 2026 are the ones who could move fruit to Khor Fakkan instead of Jebel Ali, flowers through Istanbul instead of Doha, and avocados to Shanghai instead of Rotterdam within weeks. Every one of those switches is executed by someone with a skill: maturity testing, grading, cold-chain management, documentation, booking management, buyer communication. Those skills are portable across Kenya's entire horticultural sector, and they are the content of a youth employment program that would survive the next strait closing.

Second, the binding constraint is capital, and the capital gap is an insurance gap. No amount of agronomy fills a working-capital hole created by an uninsurable voyage. Donors and foundations that want smallholder export chains to survive shocks should fund the public goods a chain depends on, farmer capacity, compliance, skills and shared infrastructure, and the risk the market will no longer price, through structures that crowd private capital in, rather than funding operations the market would finance on its own. The instruments exist, and the private lending they have mobilized is documented above.

Third, the data needed to plan for the next shock is not yet collected. Kenya reports its tea exports to Iran to the kilogram, but has no count of how many young people grade avocados for export, or what happened to them in March. A labor-force module on export horticulture and livestock by task and age would turn the exposure estimate above into a measurement, and would let the next shock be planned for rather than described afterward. This is work a national statistics office can do, and it is the kind of study a university and an exporter can run together.

## Method, caveats and authorship

This article was researched and written between 1 and 3 October 2026. Every statistic is numbered to a source in the list below, and every source was opened and read rather than taken from a search summary. Where published series conflict (flower volumes and employment, avocado export tonnages, Kenya's meat exports), the series used is named in the text and the conflict is noted here: Kenya Flower Council and AFA flower volumes differ by more than a factor of two, USDA and Chinese customs data differ on avocado tonnage to China, and KNBS/KEPROBA meat export values are roughly ten times the Observatory of Economic Complexity figure for the same year. The jobs-at-risk estimate is an exposure-weighted ceiling built from sector employment claims and export destination shares, not a survey of job losses, and the method is set out so that it can be challenged and improved. The state of the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea changes weekly; the shipping facts here are as of 1 to 3 October 2026. FarmMoja's own operational details, including the transit times and freight quotes described as our own, come from the company's 2026 booking and quality-control records; buyers and counterparties are not named. The article was revised on 5 October 2026 with additions on fertilizer policy, sea and air freight, transit times, tea markets, market access in Asia and the role of grant capital; sources 119 to 133 were added in that revision.

Bradley Opere, Co-Founder of FarmMoja Limited, is the primary researcher and writer. He has worked in the agriculture practices of Axum, McKinsey and Dalberg. Kevin Kibet Mochama, Co-Founder and Managing Director, contributed the operational record of the 2026 export season and reviewed the case study. He has practiced operational agriculture in Kenya for the past decade. The research was assisted by AI: Claude (Anthropic) was used to search, retrieve and cross-check published sources, to review sections alongside the authors' drafting, and to run an independent verification pass on the key statistics. All judgements, framing and conclusions are the authors' own, and any errors are theirs.

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## Quick answers

**How did the closure of the Strait of Hormuz affect Kenya's exports?**

Kenya's exports to the UAE fell 39.5% in the first four months of 2026, meat exports to the Gulf fell below 5% of normal, and 8 million kilograms of tea sat stranded in Mombasa.

**How much of Kenya's fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz?**

The Strait of Hormuz carries nearly a quarter of world urea exports, and about 26% of Kenya's fertilizer imports pass through it, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar the main nitrogen suppliers to the national subsidy program.

**How long does a container take from Mombasa to Rotterdam around the Cape of Good Hope?**

When the Red Sea closed, Mombasa to Rotterdam went from 18 to 22 days through Suez to 41 to 54 days around the Cape of Good Hope on our own bookings, against the 37 to 45 days first reported, and forwarders warned of cold-chain breaks and higher rejection rates on arrival.

**Why does war-risk insurance decide whether an exporter can ship?**

A bank will not lend working capital against an uninsured cargo; a buyer will not pay in advance for fruit that may never clear a strait. For an exporter whose growers are paid at harvest and whose buyer pays on arrival, the insurance gap becomes a working-capital gap, and the working-capital gap decides whether the next container is packed.

**How many Kenyan livelihoods were exposed to the 2026 closure?**

Taken at face value, somewhere between 175,000 and 300,000 export-linked livelihoods in Kenya's four most exposed chains sat directly in the path of the 2026 closure, before counting the people who supply them. This is a ceiling rather than a count.