Now that Thika road is opened up, will Nairobi food prices be cheaper?

One cannot help but assume that as the road network is much better along Thika road, the commodity prices should be cheaper. The food price is on the up, whilst this has to do with inflation, the middlemen are the only people cashing in on the advantage of better road network.

 

A cabbage in a Nairobi supermarket is going for 120 shillings, yet the farmer in Nyeri only gets 30 shillings at best. So where is the 90 shillings going? I don’t see why the middlemen and the supermarket guy need to go for 300% profits. This forms a cycle, the farmers don’t get good enough return on their produce, they stop producing, the prices shoot up and they go back to farming. The govt have made storage facility for the grains but a similar model should be made and applied for the horticulture field. Failure to this the food prices will always fluctuate and there will always be a risk for drought. 

4 potatoes sell for 20 shilling in the same supermarket whilst a sack goes for 2,500 shilling in the Marigiti market – clearly if you don’t have the ball for it, you will not want to go to Marigiti but this doesn’t justify the ridiculous pricing of food by the middlemen. However, this makes me believe the popular belief that Mama Mboga makes more money than most white collar employees. She works Monday to Monday and could make up to 2,000 shilling profits a day; this tallies to 60,000 shillings a month with no means of taxing her.