Kenya Commits to EU Deforestation Law by December 2025 – and How Blockchain Can Ensure Exports Remain Compliant

Kenya is ramping up efforts to comply with the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), a game-changing rule that could shut out non-compliant agricultural exports from the EU market starting December 30, 2024.

Under the regulation, companies exporting commodities like coffee, tea, cocoa, and palm oil to the EU must prove their products are deforestation-free. That means tracing goods back to the exact plot of land they were produced on – a massive challenge in countries with fragmented supply chains and limited digital infrastructure.

“We will align our policies with the EUDR while promoting environmental sustainability,” said Soipan Tuya, Cabinet Secretary for Environment, during a recent conference on sustainable supply chains.

But how exactly will Kenya achieve traceability from farm to port in a system long plagued by paperwork, informal brokers, and opacity?

What is the EUDR?

The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is a landmark policy adopted by the EU in June 2023 to tackle global deforestation driven by consumption within its borders.

Its core aim is to ensure that products sold in or exported from the EU do not contribute to the destruction of forests worldwide. This regulation is part of the EU’s broader Green Deal and climate action commitments, acknowledging the environmental toll of imported agricultural and forestry commodities.

The EUDR applies to seven high-risk commodities:

• Cattle
• Cocoa
• Coffee
• Oil palm
• Rubber
• Soy, and
• Wood

along with a wide range of derived products such as leather, chocolate, furniture, and paper.

These commodities are frequently linked to deforestation in tropical regions, where forests are often cleared to make way for plantations or pastureland. Under the EUDR, companies handling these goods must prove that they are not linked to deforestation or forest degradation after December 31, 2020.

To meet the regulation, businesses must conduct due diligence on their supply chains. This includes verifying the legal compliance of the products in their country of origin and demonstrating that the land used to produce them was not subject to deforestation. Crucially, companies are required to provide precise geographic coordinates of production plots, enabling EU authorities to confirm that products were sourced from deforestation-free areas.

The law imposes a strict timeline for compliance:

• Large companies must adhere to the regulation by December 30, 2024, while
• Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have until June 30 2025.

Non-compliance can lead to significant penalties, including product seizures, fines, and exclusion from the EU market. As a result, producers and exporters around the world – especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America – must now align their supply chain practices with EUDR requirements to retain access to one of the world’s largest consumer markets.

In effect, the EUDR is transforming global commodity trade by tying market access to environmental responsibility. It places new responsibilities on producers in exporting countries to monitor land use and maintain transparent records of their sourcing practices. While the regulation presents compliance challenges, especially for smallholders, it also offers a pathway toward more sustainable and equitable global trade.

The EUDR Deadline Is Looming – and the Cost of Non-Compliance Is High

According to the EU, businesses must provide geolocation coordinates for every batch of goods, along with assurances that the land was not deforested after December 31 2020.

Failure to comply could mean EU buyers will drop Kenyan suppliers altogether – a potentially devastating blow. The EU accounts for over 27% of Kenya’s agricultural exports, especially tea and coffee.

This has sparked urgent meetings across ministries and among exporters, especially smallholder farmer groups who lack the digital tools to prove their environmental credentials.

Blockchain Can Provide the Missing Link in Traceability

As demonstrated in a recent coverage by BitKE on Kenya’s battle against counterfeit medicines, blockchain-powered platforms can offer a secure, tamper-proof way to trace products across complex supply chains.

“What we did with pharmaceuticals can work for agriculture too — blockchain creates a digital fingerprint that follows the product all the way from farm to shelf,” said a local agri-tech founder building EUDR-compliant tools for exporters.

With blockchain, each stage – planting, harvesting, collection, aggregation, transport — can be recorded in a transparent, auditable system. GPS coordinates, farmer ID, land ownership documents, and deforestation checks can be embedded into a digital token or smart contract.

The EU doesn’t require blockchain. But given the scale and complexity of Kenyan agriculture, the technology offers a cost-efficient and trustworthy system to meet the regulation’s strict data standards.

How Dimitra is Enabling African Farmers Comply with EUDR

Several African countries – including Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon – are piloting blockchain-based traceability platforms with the support of the EU and private sector. Some systems even allow buyers in Europe to scan a QR code and see the product’s full environmental history.

Dimitra Europe (a subsidiary of Dimitra Inc.) has partnered with Arasco Food BV in a pilot in Cameroon to digitize coffee supply chains. Through their Connected Coffee platform, which integrates blockchain and advanced digital technologies to bring traceability, transparency, and legal verification to agricultural supply chains, smallholder farmers are onboarded – regardless of location – to register farms, manage crops, complete surveys, and collect required data. The project aims to bring 5,000 farmers onto the platform to help them secure compliance certificates that prove their coffee was produced on land not deforested after December 31 2020.

Dimitra is currently active in multiple countries across Africa – most notably:

• Cameroon
• Kenya
• Ethiopia
• Libya, and
• Egypt

using its blockchain-based Connected Farmer and Connected Coffee technologies to empower smallholder farmers, especially in high-risk EUDR supply chains.

In Cameroon (Francophone Africa, Dimitra Europe GmbH launched a pilot in partnership with Arasco Food BV to digitize and make the coffee supply chain compliant with the EU Deforestation Regulation. Using its Connected Coffee platform, the initiative is onboarding 5,000 smallholder coffee farmers in the Littoral and West regions.

In East Africa, particularly Kenya, Dimitra has partnered with One Million Avocados (OMA) to integrate its Connected Farmer platform into avocado production efforts. The app, now available in Swahili (and 17 other languages), supports pest and disease prevention, data reporting, and traceability—all anchored via blockchain. This empowers avocado growers to document sustainable practices, reduce operational costs, and align with international compliance frameworks.

In Egypt (North Africa), based on the Medium “Year in Review” report, Dimitra joined forces with Solidaridad Network and Life From Water Foundation to onboard around 3,000 farmers, implementing blockchain-backed systems for traceability and legal verification in agricultural exports.

Dimitra also signed a partnership with the Jimma Coffee Cooperative Union in Ethiopia, engaging over 140,000 smallholder farmers across 212 cooperatives. Here, Dimitra’s blockchain-enabled tech stack ensures traceability and supply chain transparency – from crop to export – supporting compliance with EUDR standards and bolstering sustainability reporting and accountability within one of Africa’s largest coffee-producing regions.

In Libya (North Africa), Dimitra partnered with the country’s Ministry of Agriculture’s AI‑ASA project, enrolling around 520 farmers (each on ~10ha) in a blockchain-based precision agriculture trial. Through its Connected Farmer platform, augmented by remote sensing and IoT, farmers receive real-time agronomic insights, soil health data, and traceable records for better resource use and compliance readiness across export chains

The Connected Coffee platform collects essential data from smallholder farmers, including farm registration, crop management practices, land coordinates, and legal documentation. By digitizing this information and anchoring it on blockchain, Dimitra creates a tamper-proof record that satisfies EUDR’s due diligence requirements – namely, proof that the coffee was not grown on land deforested after December 31, 2020. This is particularly valuable in Africa, where small-scale producers often lack formal land titles or access to tools that would otherwise verify their practices to international buyers.

Blockchain plays a crucial role by securing data integrity and enabling end-to-end traceability. Once a farmer’s data is uploaded, the platform uses geospatial verification, timestamps, and immutable logging to ensure that each step in the supply chain is transparent and verifiable – from the cooperative to the final shipment. In one notable success, Dimitra facilitated the first certified EUDR-compliant coffee shipment from Peru into Germany, showcasing how this model can be replicated across different markets, including Africa.

In addition to compliance, Dimitra’s system lowers the cost and complexity of certification for smallholders. Farmers can access the platform via mobile devices, including offline-capable apps and where there is limited connectivity, receive guidance through digital surveys, and benefit from real-time analytics to improve productivity and sustainability. By bridging the digital divide, Dimitra empowers even the most remote producers to access premium international markets without relying on costly intermediaries or manual documentation.

Overall, Dimitra’s blockchain-backed Connected Coffee platform offers a scalable and inclusive model for EUDR compliance across Africa. As the EU tightens its environmental standards, solutions like these are critical to ensuring that African exports – especially in high-risk sectors like cocoa and coffee—remain competitive and sustainable in the global marketplace.

Stay tuned to BitKE for deeper insights into blockchain use cases in Africa.

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