Rice Milling in Kenya: An Inquiry into the Process of Upgrading Rice Milling Services

Abstract

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) rely heavily on imported rice from Asia that is of superior quality compared to local rice. The objective of this study is to assess the impacts of the adoption of improved milling technologies and the associated structural transformation of the rice value chain from 2011 to 2019 using the original census of the rice millers in the Mwea Irrigation Scheme in Kenya. Our empirical analysis uses the doubly robust method and the endogenous switching model, which collectively reveal that the adopters of improved milling machines successfully improved the quality of locally milled rice. This allows it to compete with imported rice, thereby increasing the amount of domestic rice sold to supermarkets as well as urban traders and consumers. Through probit regression, it is also found that a few educated, entrepreneurial rice millers operating in rice milling clusters began using large-scale improved milling machines that included destoning capacity, importing them from China around 2010. Later, smaller improved machines were also introduced and these were more widely adopted into the rice milling clusters. In contrast, the many other millers that did not adopt improved machines were forced to downsize their business or exit the industry. These results suggest that adopting improved milling technologies—including destoners—is critical to improving the competitiveness of SSA’s domestic rice against imported rice.