According to information available on the website of the Ministry of Industrialization and Enterprise Development of the Republic of Kenya, Adan Mohamed believes local leather industry has a capacity to contribute up to 630 million US dollars to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“This taskforce has been appointed with a clear brief to share their wealth of experience on how the leather sector can be sustainably developed to create jobs and facilitate development of the leather sector in Kenya," Mr. Mohamed commented.

“Despite a heavy demand of up to 28 million units of leather, the demand is still served by imported supplies due to an existing deficit of more than 24 million units against the current local supply of less than 4 million units annually”, added the Industrialization Cabinet Secretary.

Those appointed to the one year service task force include Bata Shoe Company CEO Alberto Errico and John Muriuki, the Acting Secretary and CEO at the Kenya Leather Development Council, amongst others, according to local press.

Kenyan press is already forecasting that one of the suggested actions might be to replace imports of leather footwear by domestic production, within the public sector consumers, such as defense forces and other national services.