For millions of Kenyans, the morning begins with a familiar ritual. Water boils, tea leaves go into the pot, and milk turns a dark cup of chai into something that feels like home.
But lately, something has been different.
In some supermarkets and shops, familiar milk brands have disappeared from shelves, while other outlets have started limiting how much customers can buy. In Kisumu, a recent spot check found empty shelves and reports of some 500-millilitre packets rising from about Sh50 to Sh60.
The shortage has now become more than a supermarket problem.
Behind those empty spaces is a chain that begins with something much harder to see: a dry pasture, an expensive bag of animal feed and a farmer wondering how long the grass will last.
The milk shortage is already visible
In Nairobi, retailers have reported reduced supplies of fresh milk, with some supermarkets limiting purchases to prevent a small number of shoppers from buying large quantities. Some outlets have restricted customers to as little as one litre, while certain wholesalers have limited packaged milk purchases instead of allowing customers to buy a full carton.
The Kenya Dairy Board has confirmed that there are genuine supply constraints in parts of the country, although it has stressed that Kenya has not run out of milk.
Dr William Maritim, the Board’s managing director, said formal milk deliveries to processors fell from 84.4 million litres in June to 81.3 million litres in July 2026, a decline of 3.7 per cent. Preliminary indications pointed to a further decline in August, according to the Board.
That distinction matters.
The story is not that milk has vanished from Kenya. It is that getting enough of it through the formal supply chain has become more difficult in some places.
The problem starts long before the supermarket
To understand why, it helps to follow the milk backwards.
Before a packet reaches a refrigerator in a Nairobi supermarket, the milk has already passed through a cow, a farmer, a collection point, a cooperative or trader, a processor and a distribution network.
And somewhere near the beginning of that chain is pasture.
When the rains fail, grass becomes scarce. Farmers have to depend more heavily on purchased fodder, while livestock travel farther for water and grazing. The National Drought Management Authority reported that 52.2 per cent of monitored arid and semi-arid counties recorded milk production below their long-term average in July, linking the decline to diminishing pasture and browse, longer distances to water and deteriorating livestock conditions.
For a dairy farmer, that can translate into fewer litres from the same cow.
But drought is not the whole story
This is where Kenya's milk shortage becomes more complicated.
Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has blamed the shortage on drought and consumer hoarding, but he has also pointed to another problem: farmers are increasingly selling milk to brokers who offer better prices than some cooperatives and processors.
That creates a strange situation.
A farmer may still have milk to sell, but that milk may never make its way into the formal processing system.
Kagwe told Senators on September 16 that some consumers were also buying significantly more milk than usual after supermarkets introduced purchase limits. He described the shortage as temporary and said supplies should improve when the rains arrive.
The government has therefore been careful not to describe the situation as a national disappearance of milk.
The problem is more uneven than that.
Some communities may have milk available through informal channels while supermarkets elsewhere struggle to keep popular brands in stock.
Farmers are facing another difficult choice
For dairy farmers, the economics can be just as important as the weather.
If a cooperative pays less or takes longer to pay, while a broker offers a better price immediately, the decision becomes difficult, particularly during a dry season when the cost of keeping cattle productive is already rising.
Livestock Development Principal Secretary Jonathan Mueke highlighted that problem on September 19 while handing over bulk milk coolers to dairy cooperatives in Murang’a County.
“There is a shortage of milk. And that shortage has come because we had drought,” Mueke said, before warning that poor returns to farmers could further undermine production.
The government is now trying to strengthen the system from another direction.
Twelve bulk milk coolers valued at KSh87.94 million were handed over to cooperatives in Murang’a, with the equipment expected to benefit more than 18,500 farmers and support the handling of about 37,000 litres of milk daily.
The idea is relatively simple: keep more milk fresh, reduce losses and give farmers a more reliable route to market.
What the milk shortage says about climate change
Kenya's current dairy problem should not be reduced to the claim that climate change has directly caused every missing packet of milk.
The immediate causes identified by authorities and industry players include dry and cold conditions, inadequate pasture, fodder pressure, production costs, farmer payments, brokers and distribution challenges.
But the episode illustrates something important about climate vulnerability.
A food system that depends heavily on rainfall is also exposed to changes in rainfall.
When weather disrupts pasture, it affects livestock. When livestock produce less milk, farmers lose income. When processors receive less milk, retailers can experience shortages, and households eventually feel the effect.
Climate change does not always arrive with a dramatic photograph of a flooded city.
Sometimes, its effects move quietly through a supply chain until they reach something sitting on the breakfast table.
