The figure places Kenya second only to South Africa among Africa’s cigarette exporters. The WHO said this increased tobacco trade across Africa is fueling diseases and tobacco-caused deaths, estimated at 250,000 deaths in Africa every year.
Tobacco has no safe level of use and no meaningful health benefit.
Its products are designed to deliver nicotine, an addictive substance that keeps users coming back while exposing them to chemicals that can cause cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease and other illnesses.
“This is not just a tobacco-control issue. It is a health, trade, development and environmental issue,” said Dr Vinayak Prasad, head of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative. “Tobacco farming exposes workers and families to serious health risks, damages the environment and can trap farmers in cycles of debt. At the same time, African economies are spending more on imported cigarettes that fuel addiction, disease and premature death.”
The ‘Status of tobacco production and trade in Africa’ report offers a picture of how Kenya is becoming a major player in the global trade in sickness and death.
Kenya accounted for 14.58 per cent of Africa’s cigarette exports in 2024, second only to South Africa’s 17.55 per cent. Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe followed. Together, the five countries accounted for 63.3 per cent of the continent’s cigarette exports.
The report shows that this trade is expanding at a time when the rest of the world is moving in the opposite direction.
Between 2012 and 2024, global tobacco-leaf production fell by 18.8 per cent. In Africa, however, it increased by 8.61 per cent. The continent now accounts for 10.8 per cent of tobacco-leaf production worldwide.
The increase is being driven by a small group of ten African countries that account for about 93 per cent of the continent’s tobacco-leaf production.
Kenya is among them, although its production is dwarfed by Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia. Kenya accounted for 0.89 per cent of Africa’s tobacco-leaf exports in 2024, according to the WHO report.
The WHO said that tobacco does not deliver the economic benefits sometimes used to justify its production.
It contributes less than one per cent of gross domestic product in most African countries. Yet the health, environmental and social costs of production and consumption remain.
“Countries need support to move away from economic dependence on a product that harms health, farmers and the environment,” Prasad said. “The data show why trade and development policies must be aligned with public health and sustainable development goals.”
In Kenya, figures by the International Institute for Legislative Affairs (IILA) indicate for every shilling tobacco trade pumps into the economy, Kenyans spend three shillings treating the sicknesses it cases.
Tobacco is estimated to kill about 9,000 Kenyans annually, according to the 2015 Kenya STEPwise Survey, a national household study led by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics to track non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and their risk factors among adults aged 18 to 69.
Thomas Lindi, CEO of the Kenya Tobacco Control and Health Promotion Alliance (KETCA), said that Kenya’s situation is worsened by weaknesses in implementing existing tobacco-control measures.
He argued that tobacco companies benefit when governments delay action.
“The tobacco industry does not need to defeat governments outright. It only needs governments to delay. Delay regulations. Delay legislation. Delay implementation. Delay court compliance. Every delay creates another opportunity to market addictive products. Every procedural mistake creates another opportunity for litigation. Every policy vacuum creates another opportunity to recruit a new generation of nicotine users. The greatest ally of the tobacco industry is not necessarily weak laws. It is weak implementation,” he said.
The Tobacco Control Acts mandates the government to introduce high value crops in tobacco producing areas to wean off farmers from the plant.
The WHO report also urges African countries to support tobacco farmers to move into alternative livelihoods and crops, while strengthening implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
