Tanzania this week held its first-ever tea auction in Dar es Salaam, concluding a five-year project that is expected to not only boost incomes for the country’s farmers but also see the Mombasa Tea Auction lose over 25 percent of its volumes.

Tanzania, a mid-tier East African tea producer, is banking on the lower cost of logistics with key high quality tea producers in the region to trade about 65,000 tonnes of tea weekly.

This is bad news for the Mombasa auction, the leading tea exporter in the world, which handles about 247,000 tonnes weekly. - ANTHONY KITIMO, The EastAfrican