Kenyan agricultural projects win accolades

By Ally Jamah in Austria

Several local agricultural projects have been singled out as success stories in a seminar in Austria.

The projects were noted for their role in empowering rural women and boosting agricultural production and food security.

A research presented to experts from 21 countries assembled at the seminar indicated that the cited projects in Kenya and other countries in Africa showed that some strategies are working and need to be replicated and scaled up.

Among the projects that attracted thumbs-up is the Kenya Dairy Sector Competitiveness Programme that is boosting the income of dairy farmers.

Legal barriers

Since 2008, the project has trained 87,000 farmers, almost half of which are women. It is being run by the Land O Lakes International and funded by USAid.

Another project is "Feed the future" in Kenya and ten other African countries, which seeks to improve the lives of women agricultural producers and remove legal barriers to women in acquiring and managing land and property. The research was carried out by the International Centre for Research on Women and presented wt the ongoing seminar on Transforming Agricultural Development and Production in Africa: closing the gender gaps and empowering rural women in policy and practice.

"A lot of success stories of women empowerment in agriculture exist but these often go undocumented. This denies people the valuable lessons of the things that work and those that don’t," said Paula Kantor, ICRW’s senior Gender and Rural Development Specialist.

The four-day seminar, organised by the Salzburg Global Seminar, is expected to come up with practical action plans to boost agricultural production in Africa through increasing women’s equality.

It also emerged that in Africa, agriculture is not taken as a serious career option by young people, and is often associated with poverty and lack of formal education. It has mostly been left to rural women.

Kenya Women Finance Trust’s General Manager for Operations (Rift Valley Zone) George Kinyanjui said the Government should put incentives to entice banks and financial institutions to lend money to rural women agriculturalists.

He suggested at least 30 per cent of credit funds for financial institutions should be set aside for portfolios in agriculture, especially those targeting women.