Kenya’s long-running overhaul of its coffee trading system has been pushed further down the road, with the reform process now expected to continue until 2027.
In a gazette notice issued on 12 June 2026, Cabinet Secretary for Co-operatives and MSME Development Wycliffe Oparanya extended the tenure of the Working Committee to June 2027.
The committee, chaired by Kenneth Gitonga, was originally established in February 2025 for a one-year term to steer the restructuring of the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE).
Its core responsibility is to guide the transition of the NCE into a new trading structure aligned with the Capital Markets (Coffee Exchange) Regulations and the Crops (Coffee) General Regulations.
The committee’s mandate covers a wide range of structural and regulatory tasks, including reviewing the legal ownership of the NCE, advising on the transfer of assets and liabilities, designing a governance framework for the restructured exchange, and overseeing changes to human resource arrangements. It is also responsible for facilitating licensing applications to the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) and proposing any necessary policy or legislative amendments.
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The regulatory framework guiding the reforms was introduced in 2019 and 2020, providing for the licensing and oversight of the coffee exchange and brokers by the CMA, with implementation initially slated for July 2020.
By mid-2025, the committee had already overseen the onboarding of the Direct Settlement System (DSS) onto the NCE trading platform, a key requirement meant to ensure direct payment of coffee proceeds to farmers.
However, several critical tasks remain unresolved. These include converting the NCE into a farmer-majority-owned limited liability company, completing the transfer of assets and legal ownership, finalising the governance structure of the new exchange, and securing CMA approval for the reformed market system.
