This report on Kenya is the third in a series of studies on the contribution of livestock to the
economies of the IGAD member states. Livestock specialists frequently argue that livestock
production is underrepresented in the GDP estimates of African nations. With respect to Kenya
this argument is confirmed.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, which is responsible for estimating Kenya’s GDP, uses a
commodity flow approach to estimating agricultural GDP. According to this method, calculations
of the value of marketed agricultural production are based on the recorded value, quantities and
prices for officially marketed agricultural commodities. Non-marketed agriculture production
directly consumed by farmers or pastoralists or traded informally is estimated through periodic
household budget surveys, and – in the intervals between surveys – is assumed to grow at the same
rate as recorded marketed production. In short, the level of overall production is inferred from
that portion of the total that is traded through official channels.
The opportunity to cross-check this method of GDP estimation was provided by the Kenya human
population census of 2009 which contained questions about the animals that people kept. With
more reliable livestock figures from the 2009 census, it is now possible to estimate the amount of
physical product generated on average by a given population of animals, and to value this output
according to prevailing producer prices. In contrast to the commodity flow approach, these
techniques do not base production estimates on assumptions about how total output is partitioned
between various uses - for commercial sale, consumption by producers themselves, export, etc.