On November 27, 2025, The Star carried a story by Felix Kipkemoi titled “CS Kagwe pushes technology, private sector to drive agricultural success.” It reported that the Cabinet Secretary, who five years ago led Kenya’s war against Covid-19, was now rallying county governments and the private sector to confront another existential threat: hunger.
“Speaking at the launch of a two-day Intergovernmental Agriculture Forum (IGAF) in Naivasha, CS Mutahi Kagwe urged innovation, investment, and collaboration to secure food and create jobs.”
Forgive the yawn. At first glance, this does not sound like breaking news. And that, precisely, is the problem. The story never made it to page one—not in The Star, not in the other leading dailies, and not as a headline on television or radio. Why? Because in Kenyan newsrooms, food is not national news—until it runs out.
When a story about a two-day Intergovernmental Agriculture Forum lands on the news desk alongside another on a by-election in Mbeere North, the outcome is predictable: Politics wins. Ironically, Mbeere is among the regions notorious for perennial food shortages, yet even that irony is lost in the editorial calculus.
So, when CS Kagwe pleaded with counties and private sector players to “break out of routine, abandon comfort zones, and rethink agriculture from the ground up,” the journalist covering the event may well have been disappointed, perhaps hoping the Cabinet Secretary would comment on the by-election instead. Politics, after all, is the surest path to a page lead in Kenya’s mediascape.
Still, The Star reporter did his best to even convince his editors to run the story, including highlighting the dignitaries present at the food security forum: Council of Governors chairmN Ahmed Abdullahi, vice chairman Muthomi Njuki, CoG Agriculture Committee chairpson Governor Ken Lusaka, PS Jonathan Mueke, governors from ASAL regions, CECs from all 47 counties, and top private sector players.
But in the end, the story, tucked somewhere inside the pages, largely fell like the proverbial tree in the forest—unheard, unseen, dismissed as a non-event.
Perhaps it was deemed badly timed. Perhaps editors felt it lacked “news value.” Yet one suspects that the Agriculture CS and the governors who attended had hoped the media would amplify a sobering truth: that Kenya, a country aspiring to first-world stature, still cannot feed itself.
In the din of one-term versus two-term politics, agriculture—which, more than just the backbone of the economy, is, indeed, our lifeline—was pushed to the margins. Kagwe’s voice, urging Kenyans to invest where their lives depend, was buried deep inside the pages and prime-time bulletins.
At our news desks, the raw copy of the story must have played out thus:
Kagwe: “We are here not just to discuss agriculture. We are fulfilling a constitutional mandate. We cannot do things normally and expect different results.”
Media: We have heard that one before. This is not Covid 19…
Kagwe: “How can India, with over a billion people, and the US, with more than 300 million, export grain to Kenya? How can Egypt, a desert country, grow enough food? Let us think. Let us innovate.”
Media: Preaching. We don’t publish sermons on page one.
Even remarks that would have been banner headlines in newsrooms run by clear-thinking editors were relegated to obscurity— Kagwe warning of an impending human-capital crisis in agriculture: “In five years, 50 per cent of the Ministry of Agriculture staff will retire. KALRO does not have enough scientists. We must rebuild our human capital now.”
Media: (shrugging). Oh, is that so? By the way, where is that story about Mbeere? No—not the famine one—the one about goons…
Why was this not the leading story across print, radio, and television? To answer that, ask a simpler question: who is more likely to appear on page one of a Kenyan newspaper—the farmer or the politician?
You need no prompting. Kenya’s media feeds on politics, not food. It is perhaps the most intriguing media phenomenon, that while the media sets the agenda in Kenya, feeding Kenyans barely features on that agenda, which has only three items: politics, more politics, and mostly politics.
This neglect persists despite self-reflection within the industry.
In March, the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) unveiled a new curriculum to enhance agricultural and agribusiness journalism. MCK’s Director of Media Training and Development Victor Bwire and his colleague, Deputy Director Christine Nguku, called for deeper media coverage of what everyone seems to agree is the backbone of the country’s economy. They may as well have been speaking to the birds.
