Good Question. Why doesn’t Kenya export bananas? Some reasons... A) to be globally competitive price wise the farm gate price would need to be <10KSh a Kg to export https://twitter.com/walubengovich/status/1390942716066996224

B) Exports demand a high deal of uniformity and no bruising, which requires growing in pretty large farms (>100 acres)

C) post harvest handling on these large farms is generally done with cables and padding, with on-site boxing and containerizing... that requires scale

D) Kenya kind of grows its bananas in the wrong place, while bananas do well in volcanic soil, they also grow faster in lower altitudes. Most of Kenya’s growing zones are quite high.

E) Because global markets want uniformity the practice is to mono-crop varieties... this leads to a lot of disasters though (check out Matanuska in Mozambique)

F) Kenya doesn’t quite meet its own local demand, so local prices are higher than export prices. As urbanization is quite rapid, this isn’t likely to change.

G) Somalia was the main supply for the mid-east (see the banana war), but their farms were mid-size (20+ acres) and production was close enough to the coast for ships. Doing this in Kenya would be starting a new industry, wouldn’t work with current banana modes of production

H) dessert bananas maybe the exception to all this, but they need to be flown to export...