President William Ruto has invited representatives of tea farmers from 54 Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) run factories to State House on Thursday.
Ruto will use the occasion to hand over a cheque of over Sh2 billion recovered from two banks that collapsed five years ago with farmers' money, to the KTDA Management Services.
“You are hereby invited to accompany the National Chairman for a meeting with President William Ruto at State House, Nairobi, on Thursday, September 11, 2025, at 1 pm,” a memo to all factory directors reads in part.
About 400 representatives have been requested to meet in Nairobi CBD and then take buses to State House for the lunch hour meeting.
“The meeting shall mark the handover of payment of deposit held by KTDA Holding Ltd under Chase Bank Ltd (in Liquidation) and Imperial Bank Ltd (in Liquidation),” the memo signed by KTDA Company Secretary Mathews Odero and dated September 9, 2025, adds.
KTDA manages about 54 factories largely spread across the 16 tea growing counties that include Bomet, Kericho Nyamira, Kisii, Nandi, Vihiga, Kiambu, Muranga, Nyeri, Meru, Embu and Tharaka Nithi.
Respective governments have been keen to appease tea farmers who not only constitute a key voting bloc but are also credited with their contribution to foreign exchange earnings.
Tea, horticulture and coffee have for several years remained Kenya’s biggest export and forex earners but have recently been relegated to number two through foreign exchange earnings that are now commanded by diaspora remittances.
KTDA works directly with 611,000 farmers and indirectly impacts over four million people, a population that President Ruto is keen to reach as part of his promise to transform the sector.
In 2020, KTDA managed to recover about Sh1.7 billion from the two collapsed banks, with Sh1.4 billion from Chase Bank and Sh300 million from Imperial Bank.
Thursday's payment is said to be part of the ongoing efforts to recover all the cash through the Deposit Protect Fund operated by the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation (KDIC).
KIDC is a state corporation established under the Act of Parliament, KDI Act Cap 487C, whose mandate is to provide deposit insurance for member institutions (banks), liquidate and wind up troubled banks.
KDIC protects depositors against the loss of all their deposits or bank balances in the unlikely event of a bank failure.
Ruto’s meeting also comes at a time that his government has announced a Sh2 billion kitty for a subsidised fertiliser program to support tea farmers.
This initiative, according to the UDA administration, aims to provide fertiliser to enhance productivity and reduce the financial burden on farmers, with over 180,000 metric tons already made available to farmers at a subsidized rate in the past two years.
Former KTDA National Chair Enos Njeru said the subsidy meant that farmers can continue buying the commodity at the government-recommended price of Sh2,500 per bag.
This is the second time that Ruto is hosting KTDA factory board chairs and directors as he seeks to assure tea farmers that his government has put in place interventions to secure more markets for tea.
