By Pankaj Bedi
First, let us give credit where it is due. The Government of Kenya, and particularly President William Ruto, deserves recognition for the decisive diplomatic engagement that helped secure the temporary extension of AGOA. At a critical moment, the President clearly deployed political capital in Washington, preventing immediate disruption to export orders and safeguarding thousands of jobs.
Equally commendable was the role played by the Kenyan Embassy in Washington, which represented Kenya with clarity, urgency, and professionalism during a complex and time-sensitive process. Their engagement ensured that Kenya’s position was articulated credibly and forcefully. That collective effort matters. It signals seriousness, intent, and credibility.
But it must also be said candidly and responsibly: AGOA’s extension only buys time. It does not buy competitiveness.
The extension has temporarily calmed the market. Buyers who were cancelling orders have paused. Factories have avoided abrupt shutdowns. Jobs have been protected, but for now. However, apparel manufacturing does not operate quarter to quarter. It operates on seasonal order cycles.
In a matter of months, as buyers place orders for the next season, the same questions will return with greater urgency: Is Kenya cost-competitive? Is it structurally viable? Can it sustain scale beyond short-term preference windows?
If these questions remain unanswered, today’s relief will give way to renewed panic, followed by quiet disengagement.
The global trade environment has shifted again, and not in Kenya’s favour.
Bangladesh has now been granted zero-tariff access for apparel exports into the United States. Kenya, outside AGOA certainty, faces tariffs of around 10 percent. This is not a marginal difference. It is decisive.
Bangladesh is already approximately 20 percent cheaper than Kenya at the factory gate, driven by scale, lower financing costs, logistics efficiency, energy pricing, and a mature manufacturing ecosystem. Add a 10 percent tariff disadvantage, and Kenyan apparel becomes commercially unviable for long-term sourcing programs. In that context, AGOA’s duty-free access, while valuable, becomes insufficient on its own.
Buyers respond to arithmetic, not sentiment. As panic around Bangladesh subsides and tariff parity returns, buyers will gravitate back to familiar, lower-cost ecosystems. Kenya risks becoming an opportunity-buy market, used intermittently rather than strategically. That is not how sustainable industries are built.
Kenya’s challenge is not effort or intent. It is structure.
Despite repeated acknowledgement at the highest policy levels that Kenya carries a roughly20 percent structural cost disadvantage, meaningful, coordinated cost-mitigation has yet to materialize. Energy, logistics, financing, compliance overheads, and operational inefficiencies continue to erode competitiveness.
Even with AGOA or a reciprocal trade agreement, an expensive producer cannot win consistently. Market access creates opportunity, but only competitiveness converts opportunity into growth. This reality is already visible in Kenya’s performance in the European Union market, where competitors such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Egypt in North Africa enjoy duty-free access, deeper supply ecosystems, and faster speed-to-market than Kenya currently offers.
Trade policies can change overnight, but cost structures do not.
Despite goodwill, diplomacy, and policy intent, Kenya’s apparel exports have remained largely stagnant for nearly a decade, placing the country toward the lower end of African export performance. This stagnation persists even as peer African countries have expanded capacity, diversified buyers, and strengthened industrial ecosystems.
The implication is clear: preferences alone do not build industries. Competitiveness does.
President Ruto has consistently emphasized job creation, particularly for the youth.
Export-driven manufacturing remains one of the few sectors capable of delivering large-scale, formal employment across skill levels. Global supply chains are being reconfigured. Trade tensions have opened a window, and new investors are exploring alternatives beyond traditional hubs.
But the line between companies coming and failing versus coming and prospering is thin. Even long-established firms are under strain. Kenya must offer not just market access, but a foundation for growth, not survival.
If Kenya is to convert this moment into durable industrial growth, three priorities must move urgently from discussion to execution.
First, Kenya must continue pushing for a long-term AGOA extension, with rules of origin remaining unchanged. Predictability is essential for buyer confidence, supply-chain planning, and investment decisions.
Second, Kenya should aggressively pursue reciprocal trade agreements delivering zero-tariff access while preserving AGOA-equivalent rules of origin. In an increasingly transactional global trade environment, reciprocal arrangements may receive greater priority. This could work to Kenya’s advantage.
As a first mover, Kenya can attract new investments across multiple export-oriented sectors, positioning itself as a strategic manufacturing hub rather than a temporary alternative.
Third, and most critically, Kenya must decisively reduce the 20 percent structural cost disadvantage faced by export manufacturers. No trade framework can substitute for competitiveness.
Kenya does not lack intent, opportunity, or goodwill. What it needs now is speed, coordination, execution, and bold decision-making.
The shift from slow, incremental growth to an aggressive export-led strategy requires decisions that only the President can take. This is a moment for President Ruto to act boldly and decisively, resetting the growth trajectory and giving wings to export-driven manufacturing.
Because in global manufacturing, countries do not lose relevance suddenly. They lose it gradually, season by season, order by order, while believing they still have time.
That time is now.
The writer is the Apparels Manufacturers and Exporters (EPZ) Sector Chair and a Board Member of Kenya Association of Manufacturers and can be reached at info@kam.co.ke.