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IFAD
in Kenya
IFAD's strategy in Kenya IFAD's strategy in Kenya for 2007-2012 focuses on improving the livelihoods of poor smallholder farmers, agropastoralists and pastoralists through projects to improve, diversify and market agricultural and livestock products. IFAD's support to the Government of Kenya is in line with the framework of the Kenya Joint Assistance Strategy (KJAS), which was developed jointly by the government and its development partners. Through the UN, IFAD is a signatory of the KJAS. The joint assistance strategy document and the partnership principles — an agreement similar to a memorandum of understanding, or code of conduct applicable to other countries — were signed on 10 September 2007. More specifically, IFAD supports the national Strategy for Revitalization of Agriculture in three key areas:
By the mid-1980s grants from the Belgian Survival Fund Joint Programme (BSF.JP) and IFAD loans had made it possible to establish where Kenya's poor people were to be found and why they were poor. IFAD then built on the lessons learned from early investments, on an understanding of the location, distribution and causes of poverty, and on the experiences of BSF.JP pilot projects, to develop an assistance strategy of targeting areas with high and medium agricultural potential. Projects focused on increasing productivity by supporting appropriate technologies, increasing smallholder livestock production, promoting off-farm income-generating activities for smallholders, and encouraging community participation. A long period of restructuring of IFAD investments began in 1995. Restructuring included close attention to expenditure issues and led to changes in project financing procedures. In the interests of transparency and more effective financial management, the government implemented a rolling internal audit function by a private sector external audit firm for all IFAD programmes and projects. At the end of 2000 IFAD approved its first new project in Kenya in more than six years. Current investments include five loans, one BSF.JP grant programme and one Global Environment Fund (GEF) grant programme. A review of IFAD and BSF investments in Kenya in 2001, together with feedback from previous projects and other donors, signalled the need for a greater and clearer focus on poor rural people, in line with the National Agriculture Extension Policy of 2000. For greater poverty reduction impact IFAD is concentrating its efforts not only in areas with medium-to-high productive potential, where most of Kenya's poor people live, but also in arid and semi-arid lands where people face severe and variable climatic conditions. IFAD’s Executive Board approved two additional projects in 2002 and 2003 and another in 2005. Explicit and transparent targeting – based on poverty data from Kenya's Central Bureau of Statistics and on locally developed poverty criteria at the district level to identify poor communities and vulnerable groups – is now a feature of all new and ongoing IFAD-financed projects in Kenya. In line with IFAD's market-oriented country programme approach, the Smallholder Dairy Commercialization Programme became effective in July 2006. Its objective is to strengthen market-driven private sector development in Kenya's large and fast-growing dairy sector, and to help smallholder producers and traders build their capacities to respond to market opportunities. The Executive Board approved the Smallholder Horticulture Marketing Programme in April 2007. Its aims are to increase incomes and reduce poverty among poor households in the medium and high potential farming areas where horticulture is a primary source of livelihood. The programme encourages increased the participation of private sector service providers in programme activities, especially in the activity of carrying out participatory value-chain analysis in the programme areas. Source: IFAD |
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Ongoing IFAD operations
