Why Kenya Wants Digital IDs For its Livestock in Meat Trade

Kenya plans to put a digital identity on its livestock, creating a traceable record that could follow animals from birth and ownership through vaccination, movement and slaughter as the government tries to turn the informal meat trade into a more accountable and export-ready industry.

• The Animal Identification and Traceability System, known as ANITRAC, is intended to raise the value of the country’s meat industry, which produced 613,627 tonnes of meat worth about KSh397 billion in 2024, according to Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe.
• The system is intended to give individual animals an identifiable history rather than leaving their provenance to paper records, memory or declarations made when they arrive at a slaughterhouse. 
• That could give authorities greater visibility over livestock movements, vaccination histories and ownership while allowing buyers and processors to establish where an animal came from and how it was handled before entering the food chain.

CS Kagwe also said that the technology for ANITRAC is being developed locally, including chips and related systems by Kenyan universities. A traceability system would create a digital trail along that journey, making it easier to identify the source of animals, isolate livestock exposed to disease, and establish whether required health and movement controls were followed.

It could also make livestock theft harder to conceal thus enabling the government to combat livestock theft and banditry, especially in the North Rift region where insecurity linked to the vice has persisted for decades. 

International meat markets place a premium on food safety, animal health, and provenance. A reliable record connecting an animal to its origin, ownership and health history could help Kenyan processors demonstrate compliance and build the consistency required for higher-value export markets like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait. 

Kenya has about 2,000 slaughter facilities including 49 large slaughterhouses, 322 medium facilities, and about 1,530 slaughter slabs.

CS Kagwe has also argued that exporting live animals abroad sends the processing jobs and income elsewhere. The government wants more animals processed domestically into meat and meat products that can command better prices.