The nuts and Oil Crops subsector is important as a source of raw and processed nuts, edible oil, animal feed, and industrial oil. In Kenya, the major oilseeds produced are sunflower, simsim, soya bean, rapeseed, coconut, castor, oil palm, safflower, groundnuts.

Among the nuts grown in Kenya, cashew nuts, macadamia nuts, groundnuts (peanuts), and Bambara nuts are the most important. Other nuts grown to a very limited scale are betel nuts, chestnuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts. Kenya’s nuts which are largely used as confectionary comprise cashew nuts, macadamia nuts, peanuts, and Bambara nuts. Kenya is a net exporter of nuts, mainly comprising of Macadamias.

Kenya has over thirty (30) edible oil processing companies engaged in oil milling, solvent extraction, refining, and hydrogenation with a combined installed oil extraction capacity of about 265,500 tonnes per annum (TPA) and about 342,000 TPA refining capacity. As regards nuts, Kenya has a total installed processing capacity of 103,000TPA for export-oriented macadamia and cashew nuts and comprising of over thirty (30) companies involved in nuts processing.

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