(Bloomberg) -- Kenya slid into a recession for the first time after the economy contracted for a second straight quarter as measures introduced by the East African state to slow the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic continued to hurt output.

Gross domestic product fell 1.1% during the quarter July through September, compared with a year earlier, after shrinking a revised 5.5% in the previous three months, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday by email. The outcome was in line with the median of three economists’ estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

Before the decline in the second quarter, sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest economy last contracted in 2008, when post-election violence led to a 1.6% drop in output, according to the statistics office.

Kenya confirmed its first coronavirus infection in mid-March and later imposed a partial lockdown. Shutdowns in key markets such as the European Union and the U.K. as well as global travel restrictions hit the country’s main foreign-income earners, including tourism and exports of tea, flowers, fruit and vegetables.

Highlights:

• Agriculture, which makes up a third of GDP, continued to buoy the region’s biggest economy and grew by 6.3%, compared with 7.3% expansion in the April to June period. That was helped by tea production, which increased 14% in the quarter compared with a year earlier, thanks to favorable weather. Kenya is the world’s biggest exporter of the black variety.
• Education and accommodation and food services, which suffered the most during the nation’s lockdown, contracted by 42% and 58%. They contracted 56% and 83% respectively in the second quarter.
• The World Bank sees Kenya’s economy rebounding to growth of 6.9% in 2021, from an estimated 1% contraction last year, according to the lender’s latest Global Economic Prospects report.

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