Simba Chai

By Sir Michael McWilliam

Simba Chai is the first comprehensive history of the Kenya tea industry. From experimental plantings by enterprising settlers in the early 1900s, Kenya is now the largest supplier of tea to world markets. This has been achieved in the estates sector under the leadership of major tea companies who are now the country's largest employer,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prepare to Publish
• Release date: Jul 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781905315093

Sir Michael McWilliam

Sir Michael McWilliam's childhood was spent on a tea estate in Kenya. At Oxford he did research on the East African tea industry before a banking career with Standard Chartered and then as Director of SOAS. He was a member of the board of the Commonwealth Development Corporation (whose history he wrote), and chairman for many years of the Royal African Society and of the Royal Commonwealth Society. He was appointed KCMG in 1996. In retirement he resumed his interest in the Kenya tea industry.

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Preface

The opportunity to research and write about Kenya’s tea industry came about as a result of being elected to a research studentship at Nuffield College, Oxford in 1955.

My motivation for extending my time in Oxford for another two years was not entirely academic, but there was a serious element to my research, allied to the fact that I had spent my childhood on a tea estate in Kericho. It was this that led me to the idea of undertaking a study of the tea industry for a postgraduate thesis degree that the university offered in those days, known as a B.Litt. The Tea Board of Kenya agreed to facilitate my research, but it exacted a condition, accepted by the university, that it could control public access to the finished product. I was awarded the degree in 1957 but, unexpectedly, the Tea Board decided to enforce its veto. Thereafter, the Bodleian Library in Oxford denied reader access to the thesis and, naturally, there was no question of its publication. Some 50 years later, in retirement now, I took up the old document with a view to salvaging something and updating the narrative, particularly with regard to the smallholder tea sector, about which I had been somewhat dismissive in my thesis. I had recently served on the board of the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC), and written its history, and had become very much aware of its important role in promoting smallholder agriculture, and of its flagship project, the Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA). Two research visits to Kenya in 2003 and 2004 provided a mass of information on the emergence of tea as the country’s principal export earner. However, there was another lengthy pause for domestic reasons before the project was completed.

Some of this book is based on archival research through which I was able to see material that may no longer be readily available, if at all. The narrative of the early development of tea growing has benefitted from access to private memoranda and recorded memoirs, while the appraisal of developments in tea cultivation and manufacture is the product of the research visits referred to. The Bibliography provides more detail on the sources. The turn of the 20th century was an appropriate point to conclude the historical narrative, but I have taken the opportunity to convey a sense of where the industry is today, to point up some of the contemporary issues confronting it and to hint at the direction it might take in the future.

My father was recruited by Brooke Bond to go out to Mombasa in 1926 as a trainee salesman. The following year he was sent to Kericho to take part in the opening up of Brooke Bond’s tea estates there and worked on Cheboswa estate for several years until later returning to tea marketing. He married his childhood sweetheart on his first leave in 1930 and, as recounted in Chapter 5, spent the 1930s putting in place the tea cartel to manage tea supplies to the domestic market. During World War Two he managed the bulk tea contracts to the Ministry of Food on secondment to the government as the East Africa Food Controller. He was responsible for tea marketing in East Africa until his retirement in 1958, but stayed on in Kenya for another ten years, serving as Secretary of the Tea Board, before returning to Gloucestershire. I dedicate this book in his memory.

I also record my gratitude to the many people in Kenya and Britain who shared their knowledge and memories and who worked, or had worked for, tea organisations and companies. These include James Finlay/Swire, Brooke Bond/Unilever, Eastern Produce/Linton Park, the KTDA, Kenya Tea Board, Kenya Tea Growers Association, Kenya Tea Packers, East Africa Tea Brokers, Combrok, Thompson Lloyd & Ewart and the International Tea Committee. Some of them warrant individual mentions for their helpfulness and insights. In Kenya: Nick Paterson, on retirement from James Finlay, served as visiting agent to both his old company and Brooke Bond; Nev Davies, chief executive of James Finlay in Kenya during my visit; Richard Fairburn, chief executive of Unilever at the time; Titus Korir, deputy to Nev Davies; Stephen Musongo, estate manager of Kaproret estate; Eric Kimani, chief executive of the KTDA; Francis Wacima, tea farmer at Limuru; John Nottingham, former district officer and tea farmer; and Joyce Pickford, widow of a Kericho manager. In Britain: Oliver Brooke, former chairman of Brooke Bond Liebig in Kenya; Tom Brazier, former director of Brooke Bond Liebig; Chris Tyler, former Brooke Bond factory manager in Kericho; Lindsay Stone-Wigg, former superintendent of James Finlay; Rupert Hogg, managing director of James Finlay; and Duncan Gilmour, secretary of James Finlay.

And finally, this book would not have achieved its present form without the constructive and ever-helpful advice of my editors James Attlee, Derek Collett and Andrew Chapman at Prepare to Publish, and the guidance of Professor David Anderson with regard to referencing and preserving the archive material.

Introduction

When the consumption of tea spread beyond the caravan and shipping routes of East Asia and started to be shipped in quantity to Europe in the 18th century, it could be claimed that a global product was being established. Tea became embedded in the consumer cultures of Europe and Russia and throughout the Islamic world. India not only became the leading producer of tea for export, but the product became widely adopted in the nation itself as a staple drink. The 20th century saw its further penetration into the Americas and Africa, and the emergence of Kenya as a key player in the industry. Societies have taken to tea drinking in contrasting ways, ranging from the formal rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony to the casual office or factory tea break in Great Britain or the thriving tea stalls in South Asian street markets. In these markedly different fashions, much of the world has benefitted from tea’s unique combination of taste, a mild caffeine stimulant and the safety factor of being a beverage made using boiled water. To this has been added a more general acceptance that its properties are beneficial to health.

Kenya is justly famous for its wildlife and for the tourism sector of its economy. Less well known is that it is now the largest supplier of tea to world markets, ahead of India, China and Sri Lanka, and tea is by far the country’s most valuable commodity export, accounting for around one-fifth of total exports by the beginning of the 21st century. This is reflected in the proportion of the country that has been dedicated to tea production. In 1945 this totalled 6,400 hectares (ha). Over the following 60 years it expanded rapidly: by 1965 it had quadrupled and by the year 2000 it had increased by a factor of 25 to reach 161,000 ha. This remarkable growth was the result of two distinctive aspects of colonial rule. On the one hand, Kenya was a British colony in which enterprising settler farmers were experimenting with the cultivation of new crops and tea plantation investors were extending their territory beyond India and Ceylon; on the other, the colonial administration in East Africa concentrated on bringing about managed development, perhaps the most successful example of which was the creation of the smallholder tea sector. As a consequence, the tea industry today comprises two contrasting modes of operation: a plantation sector largely owned and managed by large international companies with 35,000 ha of tea plantations, which constitute the biggest employers in agriculture; and a smallholder sector of more than 450,000 Kenyan farmers with 126,000 ha of tea, who are themselves a major source of employment. In between these two poles there are a number of privately owned tea estates, many of them properties that were owned by earlier settlers but then acquired by elements of Kenya’s new political and economic elite.

When the East Africa Protectorate was declared in July 1895, there was no clear view of the potential of the territory that would become known as Kenya to generate wealth for its European settlers, nor was there any obvious commodity suited to export, apart from ivory. The country’s cultivators and pastoralists lived in societies that were largely self-sufficient. The climate of the highlands behind the coastal plain suggested that there were prospects for farming and settlement and this became the economic foundation of future development. With much trial and error over a 50-year period, a diversified agriculture evolved in Kenya. Export revenues were earned from coffee, sisal, pyrethrum and tea, and the country became self-sufficient in food grains, meat and dairy produce to feed a growing and increasingly urbanising population. Since independence, two important earning streams have been added to the economy: air-freighted flowers and vegetables; and a tourism sector based on the country’s wildlife reserves. Kenya became a regional manufacturing and services centre for East Africa before independence, and this role has been much enhanced by the choice of Nairobi for regional headquarters by numerous international agencies and many other organisations. Nevertheless, it is still the case that agriculture is fundamental to Kenya’s economy. As the nation entered the 21st century, around half its GDP was accounted for by its agriculture and around half the country’s commodity exports comprised food, beverages and tobacco.

The misperceptions over traditional land tenure in tribal societies at the time the colony was established were reinforced by the results of recent conflict and these led to a view that much of the highlands were vacant or so sparsely populated that incoming land occupation and settlement could take place. The drive to acquire high-quality agricultural land was driven by the need to defray the costs of the new administration. Conflicting views on the matter were a dominant feature of politics almost up until the attainment of independence in 1963. The tea plantation developments of the 1920s and after were only made possible by the land grants that took place in the early 20th century, alongside the allocation of farmland for settlement. This process was completed by the 1950s, although some adjustments of ownership have continued since then. An attempt was made in the 1930s to rectify the misjudgements through the Carter Land Commission, and again in the early post-war period. Another factor that was critical to early progress in the colony, and also the source of much controversy, was procuring a workforce from tribal communities that were engaged in subsistence agriculture and barely involved in the cash economy. Tea cultivation is labour-intensive, so attracting a workforce and retaining it were major preoccupations of the tea companies as they wrestled with the goal of establishing a settled labour force on their estates. Towards the end of the colonial period, and as part of a wider, ambitious initiative to transform the economic prospects of Kenyan farmers, plans were drawn up and implemented by the Department of Agriculture to make it possible for small farmers to grow tea to a high standard and to have it processed in order to provide their main source of income. A state corporation was established, the Kenya Tea Development Authority, to manage the project, which attracted the support of the Commonwealth Development Corporation and the World Bank. It was a great success, to the extent that smallholder tea production has overtaken that of the plantation sector and has propelled Kenya to its leading position in the global tea trade.

The way in which the tea industry evolved in the 1930s was shaped by the politics and rules of an international commodity scheme that operated between 1933 and 1948. The International Tea Restriction Scheme was a response to falling tea prices and was an attempt to rectify this by controlling the quantity of tea exported to world markets, and by stopping new planting. Despite continuing concerns about imbalance between world supply and demand for tea, and a predisposition of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for many years to support new measures to control the market, not to mention the alluring example of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), it has not proved possible to re-establish a new tea restriction scheme and thus Kenya was able to continue to expand.

Tea as a beverage was unknown in East Africa before the colonial period, except amongst Arabs at the coast. But the potential for a new market was spotted by Brooke Bond’s Indian marketing organisation and sales were made to Mombasa in the early years of the 20th century. The International Tea Restriction Scheme reinforced the importance of stimulating tea consumption in countries where tea was grown; in Kenya, this gave rise to an initiative to establish a producers’ cartel to supply the domestic market. The East Africa Tea Agreement, or Pool as it came to be known, was set up in 1938 under the operational management of Brooke Bond. It continued for 40 years and successfully established East Africa, and especially Kenya, as a tea-drinking society, and this is the only part of tropical Africa where this is the case.

After the end of World War Two there was a large expansion of the estates sector from 6,500 to 35,000 ha by the end of the century, and this has since grown to over 90,000 ha. This investment was undertaken both by the established tea companies that had been held back by the International Tea Restriction Scheme, and also by a wave of investment from tea companies with long-standing operations in India and Sri Lanka who were hedging political risk. Meantime, the newly established smallholder sector encompassed 91,000 ha by the end of the century and has since expanded further to 141,000 ha. All but 10 percent of the output from these vast developments was exported to world markets. Kenya has been very fortunate that this increased supply to world markets has not been disruptive. This is mainly on account of the fact that India and China have retained a very high proportion of their own tea production to satisfy rising domestic consumption in their own countries.

Tea had been grown and manufactured in India for 80 years before development got under way in Kenya, so that cultivation and processing methods were well tested and established and were readily transposed to the new estates. After the war, advances in understanding of plant physiology, fertilisers and herbicides began to be applied to the tea industry, along with engineering developments and insights into the chemical changes taking place during manufacture. These developments transformed crop yields, labour productivity, the development of new consumer products and quality control.

Kenya has remained welcoming to foreign investment under successive governments, unlike a number of African countries in the decades following political independence. However, international opinion has been critical of the conduct of domestic politics and of the prevalence of serious corruption in public life, which has damaged more vulnerable parts of the economy and the public services. The tea industry has been relatively unharmed by these events, except for the tragic ethnic pogroms that took place in western Kenya after the 2008 elections; otherwise, it could be said that the industry entered the 21st century in good shape. The political economy of tea has been helpful in this regard. The smallholder sector is large and vocal and its farmers span several ethnic groups. Kenyans who have acquired tea properties are well connected to the country’s ruling elite. The major tea companies set high standards in employment and social responsibility and are crucially linked to the export markets for tea. The rapid end of colonial rule in the early 1960s caught the companies unprepared as regards their management cadres, and their responses varied. But the estates were all substantially managed by Kenyans well before the turn of the century, with a high level of proficiency. Taken together, these three elements provide the industry with a measure of security and stability.

The tea industry faced a number of challenges at the commencement of the new century, arising in part from its very success. The wide gap in output between the most productive units, which yield around 6,000–8,000 kg of tea per hectare, and the average yield of less than half that amount represents a huge loss in income potential, especially for the smallholder sector. For the estates, the priority is to improve productivity and maintain profitability in the face of rising labour costs and weak global market prices. For smallholders, the aspiration of achieving increased yields and profits is, above all, a challenge for the advisory role played by the Kenya Tea Development Agency (as it is now called) and its very large constituency of farmers. The tea factories, which are now owned by the smallholders, face the issue of how best to benefit from – and finance – advances in manufacturing practice.

The goal of seeing stabilised communities working on the estates has been undermined by ethnic tensions and by the scourge of HIV. But the Kenyan industry is fortunate in having the presence of international investors with a strong commitment to their social responsibilities, and an indication of their approach to resolving these problems is given.

As a result of Kenya’s huge production of tea for export, domestic consumption only accounts for around 10 percent of its output. This contrasts with India, which absorbs around 80 percent of its own production. The Kenya Tea Packers Association has a challenge to promote tea drinking more widely in its domestic hinterland in the way pioneered by Brooke Bond in the early post-war era, since this is unlikely to be a priority for the major international companies. Tea drinking has been strongly embedded in the culture of many diverse societies and Kenya’s example indicates that it could spread more widely in Africa. In contemporary Western urban culture, the drinking of tea is less strongly promoted than that of coffee, or of manufactured drinks like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The global tea industry could do with the innovative flair of a Starbucks to re-establish its place as a beverage of choice with a younger generation and the widening appreciation of its health benefits indicates a possible way forward. Meantime, Kenya has consolidated its place as an essential supplier to the tea drinkers of Europe, North America and the Middle East.

1

How It All Began

From China to Africa

Tea was introduced in England in the mid-17th century as an exotic beverage for the well-to-do and its popularity spread very quickly. For a rapidly urbanising population, for whom access to safe drinking water was a public health problem, boiled water flavoured with tea, the addition of milk and a liberal helping of sugar (now readily available from the West Indies) replaced beer as the everyday beverage and was nutritious to boot. Tea became a national drink from the drawing room to the factory canteen, and the source of supply was a single port in southern China. Canton was up to a year’s voyage away and the trade was strictly regulated by the Chinese authorities, so that for a long time very little was known about how it was grown or manufactured. The explosive demand for the product led to much adulteration, both in China itself (the most famous lineal descendant being the bergamot-adulterated Earl Grey tea) and in the English trade, in order to offset its high price. A lively smuggling trade developed in order to avoid customs duties, which provided more opportunities for innovative blending. Famously, the attempt by Lord North’s government to assert its right to tax the American colonies by imposing a tea duty was the spark that led to the War of Independence.

China’s supply of tea for Europe was based on peasant production and a primitive porterage supply line that could not respond quickly to rising demand. The East India Company controlled all trade with China, where ordinary merchandise trade was highly restricted, so that payment for tea exports had to be made in silver. The solution found by the Company during the 18th century was to promote a vast smuggling trade in opium from Bengal. The opium was shipped clandestinely to China and sold for silver at great profit, which in turn provided the wherewithal to pay for the Company’s tea purchases. The varied legacy of this fateful trade included the Opium Wars, the acquisition of Hong Kong, the opening of the treaty ports and their associated ‘unequal treaties’, which have continued to reverberate through to the present day.

The East India Company’s monopoly of the China trade was terminated in 1834, and that same year a Tea Committee was set up in Calcutta to examine the possibility of establishing a tea industry in India, where the beverage was unknown. A mission was despatched to China to collect tea seed. Curiously, specimens of the camellia tree had been sent to the Calcutta Botanical Garden over many years, but there had been a reluctance to conclude that this was the same species as in China. In the event, the Tea Committee did pronounce that tea was indigenous in Assam and, over the ensuing years, plantings were made of both Assam and China tea. The first samples were sent to London for auction in 1839 and the excitement this generated led to the founding of the Assam Company, the first of many Indian tea companies. In 1848 the East India Company recruited the notable plant hunter Robert Fortune, manager of the Chelsea Physic Garden, to return to China to make a further collection of tea plants and seeds. It was on this trip that Fortune solved the 100-year puzzle of green and black tea, by establishing that the difference lay in its manufacture and was not the product of different plant varieties. Rapid expansion of the industry led, by 1888, to tea imports to England from India exceeding those from China for the first time. ¹

Meanwhile, the first tea planting had taken place in Ceylon in 1867, where it was found to be a successful replacement for coffee, which had been devastated by a fungal disease. By the end of the century Ceylon was a major tea exporter, vying with India, and with numerous corporate links between the plantation companies. Just as in Assam, the tea plantations were established in forested areas of the country and large numbers of workers had to be induced to come to live there: from elsewhere in Bengal in the case of Assam, and from Tamil Nadu in south India in the case of Ceylon.

The next step in the westward migration of Camellia sinensis to Africa followed closely on the establishment of the East Africa Protectorate in 1895 and the arrival of the early settlers. In their search for potential agricultural crops, some of them had personal connections with India and, not long after, visitors from Ceylon and India spotted the potential for tea.

Early Settlers and the Crown Lands Ordinance

The establishment of British rule in Kenya presented an immediate economic challenge: the administration was burdened with the task of servicing the loan costs of the railway from Mombasa to Kisumu on Lake Victoria, 580 miles into the interior, and making it viable; there were no obvious tropical export commodities or signs of surplus production; the small population of the country had recently been ravaged by disease and warfare; and British rule itself was challenged for several years in the west of the country, requiring numerous punitive and expensive military engagements. On the other hand, early explorers and visitors noted the suitability of the highlands for European settlement, and this fitted with the ethos of 19th-century imperialism where it had been such a feature, as highland settlement had been such a feature of the development of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and also South Africa. No surprise therefore that Sir Charles Eliot, the commissioner, encouraged immigrant settlers to the highlands with a view to stimulating development and government revenues. Although the initial emphasis was on the Rift Valley for ranching and cereal crops, land grants were also made in districts that subsequently became significant for tea growing: Limuru, Kericho and Nandi.

In Limuru, the government began allocating land in 1903, under pressure from the flow of new settlers. Its authority was the 1901 East Africa (Lands) Order in Council, which defined Crown land as all public land controlled by His Majesty, and the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1902, which restricted the commissioner from selling or leasing land that was in actual occupation by ‘natives’, although he could do so if occupation had lapsed. This proved to be a fallible basis of operation for three reasons. First, there had been a severe reduction in the Kikuyu population in the recent past as a consequence of a devastating smallpox epidemic, so that areas that had been in regular occupation were currently vacant. Second, there was little understanding among the colonial administrators at the time of the complex system of Kikuyu land use and ownership. ² The Kikuyu lived in dispersed family households rather than in villages, on land owned by family groups and inheritable within them. They cultivated scattered plots over a ridge and valley, identifiable to those concerned, and practised a system of shifting cultivation. Much of the area had previously been under the control of a different tribe, the Dorobo, and there was a history of both purchase and conquest between different tribes. Tenancy arrangements with non-family persons were not uncommon. All this produced a situation in which land that appeared vacant might actually be subject to a history of cultivation and ownership.

Thirdly, onto this scene now came a flow of settlers, many with experience of farming in South Africa, impatient to acquire farms and frustrated by dealing with an understaffed Lands Department. No official survey had been made to define precise areas that were to be made available for settlement in terms of the Ordinance. In practice, settlers selected their farms and then registered them, notwithstanding the presence of Kikuyu farmers on parts of the land, subject only to a requirement to pay compensation – on a uniform tariff for occupancy rights. There were numerous instances of non-compliance in this regard.

Eliot was in favour of the interpenetration of settlers with the Kikuyu cultivators, rather than the demarcation of reserves, and the outcome was much alienation to settlers of land on which the original farmers were still present. Under the terms of the Ordinance they had no legal status, other than compensation, and those remaining were deemed to be squatters; however, this suited the settlers since it offered a potential source of farm labour, and the practice of resident families cultivating their own smallholdings but providing labour for the farm owner became widespread in the settlement areas in the highlands. Although the Crown Lands Ordinance gave the government control over land allocation to settlers and for public purposes, its disregard for traditional systems of land usage, and its eagerness to create opportunities for commercial agriculture, stored up serious political problems for the future. Some of these problems were addressed in the 1930s in the report of the Kenya Land Commission, but others still fester.

In the early 1900s, Kenya represented a new frontier for a number of farming families in South Africa and there was a wave of settlement, especially to the high plateau around Eldoret. Others obtained land grants in areas that eventually were shown to have tea potential: in Limuru (Caine), Kericho (Wilson) and Nandi (Turton). There are two main sources of information on the early tea-growing settlers. Hugh Thomas was one of the first planters to be transferred from India to Kenya in 1927; he collected reminiscences in the 1930s and subsequently