A country’s absolute advantage is its uncontested superiority to produce a

particular product better, while its comparative advantage is its capability to

produce a particular product at a lower opportunity cost than its trading
partners (Hayes, 2021). The comparative advantage enables a country to sell its
products at a lower price than its competitors and realize stronger
sales margins. It also introduces opportunity cost as a factor for analysis in
choosing between different options for production diversification.

I am from Kenya, a country with a population of 47.6 million as of 2019 (Trizer,

2019). The main products that Kenya export include tea (amounting to
$1.13B), Cut Flowers ($616M), Refined ($404M), Coffee ($224M), and Titanium
Ore ($143M).

Its main imports are: Refined Petroleum (accounts for $3.07B), cars ($522M),
Packaged Medicaments ($471M), Wheat ($439M), and hot-Rolled Iron ($413M).

The produce that I believe that Kenya should produce instead of import is
Sugar. We have so much land that if properly utilized can be used for
sugarcane plantation. However, due high cost production, inefficiencies at
processing and marketing levels, lack of investments in increasing the quality
of our land through irrigation, land reclamation, improving soil quality in terms
of nutrients, as well as lack of support in the sugarcane industry, a situation
that even leads some farmers to burn their sugarcane plantation at the
expense of selling their canes to the sugar processing farms (due to low-and-
exploitative prices, lack of agreements and lack of agreements between the
companies and farmers), still imports and remains a sugar deficit country.

I believe that if the government can protect the local industry by limiting its
imports and boosting the industry by lowering taxes for sugar processing
companies, subsidizing on fertilizers, investing in land reclamation and
irrigation in arid and semi-arid regions, placing a price floor for the sugarcane
sell from farmers to sugar processing factories, it will attract new investments
into the sector and boost its growth.

References
Hayes, A. (2021). Comparative Advantage. Retrieved June 2, 2021, from

Investopedia.com website:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/comparativeadvantage.asp

Trizer, M. (2019, November 4). 2019 Kenya population and housing census results.

Retrieved June 2, 2021, from Knbs.or.ke website: https://www.knbs.or.ke/?

p=5621