If Uganda shuts flood gate of food, Kenyans will sleep hungry

She prefers to ferry her ginger, oranges, mangoes,  vegetable and pepper from Uganda to sell in Kenya rather than get them from Kenya where the profits are thin and the supply is not guaranteed. Violet Mutahi, a trader at the Kakamega retail market, was introduced to the cross-border trade by a friend and is now among a group of traders from Western Kenya who cross over to Uganda to buy food crops to sell in Kenya.

“Three quarters of the food we sell largely comes from Uganda and at times Tanzania. What we get from Kenya is just sukuma wiki and kunde. We get the rest such as eggs, ginger, tomatoes, bananas, simsim and groundnuts from Uganda,” she says.