A small gem-cutting industry is emerging in Kenya but most of Kenya's gemstone production is exported rough. The Government has introduced measures to encourage local gemstones processing in order to take advantage of 'Value Added' and to promote indigenous cutting technology. Kenya presently produces about thirty types of gemstones, including ruby, green garnets, rhodolite garnet, red garnet, rose garnet, almandine garnet, blue sapphire, yellow sapphire, pink sapphire, green tourmaline, yellow tourmaline, zoisites, aquamarine, lolite, scapolite, peridot and so on. Some of these are detailed below. The gemstone belt stretches between Kenya and Tanzania.
Production is by small-scale mining, usually relying on manual labour.