Ensuring food safety in Kenya

Introduction

A digital inspection solution has helped the Kenya Dairy Board enhance food safety, improve regulatory oversight, and ensure compliance across the dairy sector

Case metrics

Key statistics

4,000+

annual inspections conducted

6

months implementation time for the digital solution

1,000+

dairy businesses regulated under KDB

The challenge

Why food safety regulations need effective digital enforcement

Good lawmaking is a necessary precondition for good governance, but it is not enough. Inspections, monitoring, and audits are also prerequisites to good and sound governance. Without efficient enforcement, laws rarely impact real life as intended, and when the intention is to protect the environment or ensure food safety, inefficient enforcement has dire consequences.

In Kenya, a pilot project of efficient digital management inspections, sponsored in part by the Danish government, has given opportunity to strengthen both efficiency and transparency. The Kenya Dairy Board (KDB) is the government entity responsible for regulating and controlling the dairy sector value chain in Kenya from milk producers to milk bars.

Each year, KDB controls around 1.000 dairy business operators via at least 4.000 annual on-site physical inspections. For KDB, it was previously difficult to obtain and maintain an overview of activities, and they had no real-time access to data sources.

The solution

Digital inspection system for food safety and compliance

The KDB solution uses KDB’s existing client information, and the dairy business operator is well-informed during the whole process from pre-inspection planning and reviewing through the inspection to the post-inspection phase, in which recommendations and follow-up actions are incorporated in a final inspection report.

For example, a company automatically receives an inspection report immediately after a conducted inspection with the findings and preliminary recommendations before the final review is done. This allows the compliance officer to discuss the findings and recommendations in detail with colleagues after the inspection.

The result

Stronger regulatory oversight with scalable digital inspections

The digital inspection solution for KDB has significantly improved efficiency, transparency, and accountability in dairy regulation enforcement.

The solution ensures more efficient and accountable inspections, with top-level data security, ensuring that regulatory processes are both reliable and scalable. It builds upon best practices from audits and inspections developed for the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Additionally, the Kenyan experience now serves as a model that can be replicated and adapted by other food regulators worldwide.

The digital solution was successfully implemented in just six months, integrating all necessary functionalities, including the maintenance of a centralized base register of all companies subject to inspections. This has provided KDB with a structured and real-time overview of their regulatory responsibilities, reducing administrative burdens and enhancing decision-making.

Furthermore, the KDB project was supported by the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, reflecting a strong commitment to international collaboration and capacity-building. The initiative also aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 17, "Partnerships for the Goals," by promoting innovative digital governance solutions in regulatory frameworks.

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