Processed cashew nut stocks across East Africa’s producing nations reached 38,500 tons in 2025, a 5% year-on-year increase that signals a divergent recovery in the regional value chain.
According to preliminary data released by the independent market advisory service N’kalô on February 3, 2026, the growth was driven almost exclusively by a record-breaking performance in Tanzania.
While regional volumes remain significantly below the 2020 peak of 62,750 tons, the current uptick reflects a strategic shift toward domestic value addition as governments move to insulate their agricultural sectors from the price volatility of the global raw cashew nut (RCN) market.
Tanzania emerged as the regional anchor in 2025, processing 20,000 tons, a 67% increase from the previous year and the country’s highest output in five years. This performance allowed Tanzania to capture 52% of the East African processing market, a milestone supported by a robust 2025/2026 harvest targeted at 700,000 tons.
The surge in local processing is a direct outcome of infrastructure investments, including the development of the Maranje agro-industrial park in the Mtwara region. In partnership with the industrial developer Arise, the Tanzanian government aims to scale local capacity to 600,000 tons by 2030, seeking to reverse a historical trend where over 85% of the crop is exported raw to processors in India and Vietnam.
In contrast, Mozambique, once the region’s dominant processor, saw its volumes contract by 28% to 15,000 tons in 2025. This decline highlights the structural vulnerabilities facing the sector, including aging processing equipment and the intense competition for raw materials from international exporters who often offer higher immediate liquidity to farmers.
Despite a potential national capacity of 110,000 tons, Mozambique’s current output is a fraction of the 40,000 tons it processed in 2020, illustrating the difficulty of maintaining industrial momentum amid fluctuating global demand and domestic logistics constraints.
Kenya and Madagascar recorded stagnant processing volumes of 2,500 tons and 1,000 tons respectively, both operating far below their technical potential. In Kenya, the primary bottleneck is a chronic deficit in raw material supply; while the country possesses an installed processing capacity of 45,000 tons, the 2024 harvest yielded only 7,803 tons.
To address this 80% capacity gap, the Ministry of Agriculture launched a 30 billion shilling ($232.5 million) recovery plan in January 2026. The strategy, anchored at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO) in Mtwapa, focuses on distributing 20,000 disease-tolerant seedlings to replace unproductive coastal orchards and revive the livelihoods of an estimated 350,000 workers.
For African economies, the underutilization of cashew processing capacity represents a significant loss of fiscal revenue and industrial opportunity. Currently, Africa produces over 60% of the world’s raw cashews but captures only a small fraction of the secondary market value.
Closing this gap is increasingly viewed as a governance and economic necessity rather than an environmental ideal. By shifting from RCN exports to kernel processing, East African nations can lower their trade deficits, improve rural income stability, and develop more resilient agro-industrial ecosystems.
The success of these regional recovery plans will likely depend on the availability of affordable financing for small-scale processors and the enforcement of policies that prioritize domestic supply.
As Tanzania scales its industrial parks and Kenya rehabilitates its coastal orchards, the focus for 2026 remains on whether these institutional interventions can mobilize the private investment required to turn East Africa from a raw material provider into a global hub for processed cashew products.
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