A kilo of capsicum costs KSh 10 in one Kenyan market and KSh 500 in another

The Ministry of Agriculture records what traders pay and what shoppers pay in Kenyan markets, every day. Put 22 of those markets side by side for one vegetable and something strange appears: a kilo of capsicum sells for KSh 10 in one and KSh 500 in another. That is 50 times the price, in the same country, in the same week.

The obvious suspicion is a recording error — someone pricing per piece rather than per kilo. It does not hold. The dearest markets form a smooth gradient rather than a single outlier, and the wholesale price tracks alongside the retail price at every step. Traders in the expensive markets are paying more too.

Capsicum is the widest, but it is not alone. Across every commodity recorded in eight or more markets, the pattern repeats.

None of this means traders are profiteering. Transport, spoilage and the risk of unsold stock are real, and a vegetable that rots in three days carries costs a tin of paint does not. What it does show is that Kenya has no national price for food — only a collection of local ones, and no easy way for a buyer in one place to know what a buyer elsewhere pays.

That gap is the whole reason the figures are worth publishing. The Ministry already collects them.