For more than a century, Kenya has watched trains ferry soda ash from the shores of Lake Magadi to Mombasa for shipment abroad. Now, the government wants to reverse that journey by ensuring the mineral fuels factories at home before it leaves the country.

Principal Secretary (PS) for Industrialisation Juma Mukhwana says Kenya must stop being a supplier of industrial raw materials to the world, instead use its resources to manufacture products, create jobs and build wealth locally.

Dr Mukhwana notes that the government’s push to attract investors to establish glass and chemical manufacturing facilities in Magadi will transform the area into a major industrial hub and provide a model for resource-based industrialisation in Africa.

“Magadi represents something much bigger than soda ash. It represents a choice,” the principal secretary observes.

Notably, soda ash, extracted from Lake Magadi, is a critical industrial input used in the manufacture of glass, detergents, chemicals and a range of other products. For decades, much of Kenya’s soda ash has been exported after processing, allowing countries that import the mineral to capture substantial value through downstream manufacturing.

Mukhwana notes that this model has effectively denied Kenya factories, employment opportunities, technology and business opportunities that come with processing the mineral locally.

“We have effectively been exporting not merely soda ash. We have been exporting potential factories, potential jobs, technology and opportunities for our engineers, chemists, technicians, transporters, entrepreneurs and young people,” he explains.

The principal secretary wants Magadi to evolve from a mineral extraction site into the centre of an industrial ecosystem anchored on glass and chemical manufacturing. He envisages modern glass factories producing materials for construction, windows, bottles, food and beverage packaging, pharmaceuticals and laboratories, alongside chemical plants located close to the source of raw materials.

Such anchor industries, he points out, would create demand for a wider network of enterprises, including transport and logistics firms, packaging companies, engineering and maintenance businesses, laboratories, equipment suppliers and other small and medium-sized enterprises.

“One factory creates demand for another. One industry creates capabilities that attract another. One skilled worker trains another. One supplier becomes 10 suppliers,” the principal secretary observes.

He points out that the opportunity extends beyond Magadi to Kenya’s broader trade relationships, particularly with India, which he described as a longstanding economic and commercial partner.

Mukhwana cited official Indian trade figures showing that Kenya-India merchandise trade reached approximately $4.31 billion in the 2025/26 financial year. India exported goods worth about $4.01 billion to Kenya, while Kenyan exports to India stood at approximately $290 million.

“For approximately every dollar India bought from Kenya, Kenya bought nearly 14 dollars from India,” he noted.

The structure of the trade, he adds, is as significant as the imbalance. Kenya exports tea, coffee, soda ash, vegetables, scrap metal and other largely primary or minimally processed commodities, while importing petroleum products, pharmaceuticals, machinery, vehicles, electrical equipment, plastics and chemicals.

Mukhwana insists that the relationship should now evolve from one dominated by buying and selling to a partnership based on investment, manufacturing, and joint exports.

“Kenya does not seek to stop Indian companies from selling products to our market. Quite the opposite. We want Indian companies to succeed in Kenya. But increasingly, we should be asking them to make in Kenya what they sell in Kenya and Africa,” he says.

For instance, pharmaceutical manufacturing, he states, offers an immediate opportunity, given India’s expertise in the sector and Kenya’s growing industrial base, skilled workforce and access to the East African Community and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) market.

Mukhwana proposes that Indian pharmaceutical companies could establish production facilities in Kenya to manufacture medicines not only for the local market but also for consumers across Africa.

He adds, could be extended to automotive components, electronics, textiles, chemicals, and machinery.

“The future Kenya-India relationship should therefore move beyond seller and buyer. It should become a relationship of co-investors, co-manufacturers and co-exporters,” he says.

Kenya needs greater access to the Indian market for its own products such as tea, coffee, avocados, macadamia nuts, leather, textiles and other value-added goods.

Mukhwana proposes a modern Kenya-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement to address the changing nature of global trade, noting that the existing framework dates back to 1981.

Such an agreement, he says, should seek measurable growth in Kenyan exports to India, tackle tariff and non-tariff barriers, strengthen mutual recognition of standards, promote technology transfer, and deepen industrial cooperation.

The principal secretary says Magadi is ultimately about a much larger question: whether Africa will continue exporting the building blocks of industrialisation or use them to build its own manufacturing capacity.

He underlined the longstanding pattern of exporting commodities and importing finished products, from hides and skins and cotton to minerals and crude petroleum.

“Every time we export an unprocessed or insufficiently transformed resource that could competitively support manufacturing at home, we should ask ourselves: How many jobs are leaving the country with that ship? How many factories? How much technology?” he poses.

The Government’s Magadi strategy, he states, should therefore form part of a wider industrial policy that links natural resources with manufacturing, skills, infrastructure, investment and markets.

Rather than seeing trains leave Magadi carrying soda ash to ships at Mombasa, Mukhwana wants to see finished Kenyan products making the reverse journey to domestic, regional, and international markets.

“Africa must graduate from being the world’s quarry and farm to becoming one of the world’s great workshops,” the principal secretary notes.

He equally maintains that Kenya’s natural resources should generate more than export earnings, arguing that their greatest potential lies in creating industries, skilled employment, technology, and enterprises at home.

“Kenya must manufacture. Africa must manufacture. Our resources must build our industries, our industries must create our jobs and our jobs must create our prosperity,” Mukhwana observes.

• A Tell Media / KNA report / By Nancy Omondi and Michael Omondi