Kenya, Europe’s biggest supplier of cut flowers, has a chance to market horticulture exports to American consumers after the U.S. approved non-stop flights between the two nations.
The $69 billion economy, East Africa’s biggest, earned 90.4 billion shillings ($873.6 million) in 2015 from agricultural exports such as green beans, mangoes and carnations. Cut flowers sent to an auction in the Netherlands or directly to supermarkets in the U.K. accounted for almost 70 percent of total shipments.
Some exports are repackaged for the U.S. market, where consumers have no idea of their origin, according to Zakayo Magara, managing director at Kenya’s Horticulture Crops Directorate.
“We lose ownership and identity of the products when they’re re-shipped in new packaging from Europe,” Magara said by phone from the capital, Nairobi. “We need to create a link between our producers and the clients on the other side and take the opportunity brought by the shortened distance and the reduced cost.”
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Kenya Flower Council, an industry body, is “eagerly” waiting to deliver flowers, and hopes flights will be in place by June, in time for the International Floriculture Expo in Chicago, it said on its Twitter account.
Kenya shipped goods valued at 40.7 billion shillings to the U.S. in 2015, with garments accounting for almost 90 percent. The nation can export apparel and textiles duty- and quota-free under the African Growth Opportunity Act, a U.S. initiative to boost imports from the continent.
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Tea and specialty Arabica coffee will also benefit from direct links, Magara said. Without the Category 1 rating conferred on Kenya by the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday, all flights to the U.S. have had to make a stopover in another country with the same ranking, usually in Europe or the Middle East. Kenya is the world’s biggest exporter of black tea.
Delta Air Lines Inc. in 2009 postponed plans to start direct flights between Atlanta and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, via Senegal, after the U.S. government refused permission at the last minute over security concerns.
Kenya borders Somalia, where al-Qaeda-linked militants have been waging an insurgency since 2006 to oust the United Nations-backed government and impose a strict version of Shariah, or Islamic law. The militant group, al-Shabaab, carried out an attack in 2013 at a shopping mall in Nairobi that left at least 67 people dead, in revenge for Kenya deploying troops in Somalia in 2011.