Evaluation Report: Scaling Investment for the Resilience of East Africa Coffee Producers Program (Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda)

Overview

This end-term evaluation looks at both phases (2018–2020 and to 2022) of the Coffee Resilience Program. Solidaridad East and Central Africa ran it with research, government, private-sector and farmer-organisation partners, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded it. The aim was to make small and medium-scale coffee farmers and workers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania more resilient and more profitable. The programme targeted 27,000 farmers in phase 1 and 35,000 in phase 2. The evaluation measured results against the outcome and output indicators set at inception. It also assessed relevance, effectiveness and efficiency, and looked at how gender, climate and ICT were built in. Finally, it drew lessons for possible follow-up projects.

Key findings

• Cherry yield per tree went up for every farmer category. In Kenya, medium/large-scale farms rose from 2.6 kg to 4.5 kg. For Kenyan small-scale farms the report gives two baselines: 2 kg in 2018 (executive summary) and 3.2 kg in 2017 (findings section), both rising to 3.5 kg in 2022. In Uganda, small-scale farms rose from 2.3 kg to 3.8 kg and medium/large farms from 2.3 kg to 2.78 kg. Tanzania reached 2.5 kg per tree, still below the 4 kg target.
• Cooperatives reported premium grades of 65% (Kenya) and 59% (Uganda) for small-scale farmers. For medium/large-scale farmers the figures were 76% (Kenya), 76% (Uganda) and 50% (Tanzania). The baseline was 45% and the target 70%.
• More than 70% of farmers had easy access to information on agricultural finance, but few took credit: under 40% in Uganda and under 30% in Kenya and Tanzania. The report links this to difficult loan terms and a lack of products designed for coffee. SACCOs were the main credit source in Kenya and Tanzania, and VSLAs in Uganda.
• In Kenya, women's membership of cooperatives rose from 18% in 2017 to 37% in 2022, youth membership from 9% to 16%, and the share of youth in cooperative leadership from 27% to 48%. Women's membership fell slightly in Uganda and Tanzania. Female-headed coffee farms rose to about 10%, from under 5% in Uganda and Tanzania in 2019. Women still do over 80% of labour such as weeding and post-harvest handling.
• Most trained farmers adopted good agricultural practices: over 80% in Kenya for most practices, and close to all trained farmers in Tanzania. The exceptions were energy-saving technology (25% adoption among trained farmers in Kenya) and nursery management (68.63% in Kenya). Tanzania had the lowest access to training.
• Few farmers got information through mobile platforms: 5% in Kenya, 4% in Uganda and none in Tanzania. The ICT goal was not fully rolled out except during COVID-19 restrictions.
• Farmers reporting higher household income included 44% in Kenya (significant improvement), 44% in Uganda and 36% in Tanzania. The share with more than one income source was 49% (Kenya), 66% (Uganda) and 80% (Tanzania). The narrative says 30,614 beneficiaries were reached against a target of 50,000 direct beneficiaries. The beneficiary table gives a different total (80,674), which includes farmers reached through collaborating projects.

In figures

Recommendations

• Support the creation and formal registration of informal microprocessors and coffee value-addition and marketing businesses owned by women, men and youth.
• Help youth and women's groups get licences and run commercial nurseries for improved coffee seedlings, linked to coffee research institutes and a reliable supply of germplasm.
• In future programmes, do a deeper gender analysis before and during implementation, covering roles, rights to land and assets, and gender mainstreaming pathways specific to each country.
• Use a variety of digital and mass-media channels (USSD, SMS, WhatsApp, apps, tailored radio and TV) and bundle services such as soil testing, weather, agronomic and market information.
• Put more emphasis on management support to coffee cooperatives: business readiness, restructuring, business systems, micro-processing, market development and internal governance.
• Review how the programme works with cooperatives, government and research agencies and private-sector partners, and agree framework agreements or MoUs that set out each partner's duties.
• Adopt a robust beneficiary database and integrated knowledge-management system aligned with the M&E framework. The steering team should seriously consider extending the intervention, by about 3 more years according to the consultants.

Lessons learned

• Most stakeholders interviewed felt the project period was too short to resolve cooperative management issues, embed climate-resilient innovations and improved germplasm, and overcome socio-cultural barriers. COVID-19 in 2020 also cost time.
• Efforts to raise women's participation unintentionally added labour-intensive work to women's load.
• High cost limits adoption of energy-saving stoves and biogas units by small-scale farmers unless grants or other support organisations help.
• Unstable international coffee prices discourage farmers from investing in quality. Farmers said stable prices attract investment in high-quality coffee.
• Data on farmer mobilisation, tracking of adopters, production, sales and marketing were inconsistent or missing, especially at producer-organisation level.

Methodology

Mixed-methods, non-experimental, cross-sectional design compared against the 2017 baseline and the 2019 impact evaluation. It used document review, a household survey of 443 coffee-farming households (171 in Kenya, 167 in Uganda, 105 in Tanzania; target 493, drawn by simple random sampling from cooperative membership lists), 15 FGDs, 35 key informant interviews, cooperative questionnaires and structured observation, analysed against the OECD-DAC criteria.

Limitations

• The sample fell short of the 493 target (443 interviewed) because of logistics, farmers' busy schedules in Tanzania, Ebola-related movement restrictions in Uganda, and insecurity in parts of Kenya (e.g. Kericho County).
• Individual farmers could not report bean quality because processing happens at cooperative level, so quality was assessed at cooperative level only.
• The design is non-experimental. Changes are compared with the baseline and attributed through farmer and FGD testimony, without a comparison group.
• Project data from farmer mobilisation, adopter tracking and production and sales records were inconsistent or missing, and could not easily be traced at producer-organisation level.