Food Products Reclaim Sustainability! Baseline – Kenya and Uganda

Overview

Baseline for the Reclaim Sustainability! Food Products (horticulture) project, part of the 2021-2025 programme run by Solidaridad, Fairfood, TrustAfrica and Business Watch Indonesia with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It covered Meru, Kirinyaga, Makueni and Kajiado counties in Kenya, and Mpigi, Mityana, Luwero and Wakiso districts in Uganda. It mapped private sector policies and inclusive business models, public sector frameworks, and civil society advocacy against the programme results framework. The report is dated September 2021.

Key findings

• In Kenya, private input and export companies train farmers and say they are committed to sustainability norms, but none has produced policies that could be adopted nationally or regionally.
• Kenyan exporters were found to treat men and women fairly, with no child labour. About three-quarters of farmers met Good Agricultural Practice standards required for EU markets, and private farms showed high adherence to Global GAP and KS 1758:2016 standards.
• Inclusive business models found include aggregation, contract farming and co-investment in Kenya, and direct market linkages, cooperative/group models, contracting, the two-acre model and processor-driven models in Uganda.
• Kenyan county frameworks being implemented include domestication of the Horticulture Regulations 2020, county potato policy (Meru), climate-smart agriculture training, value addition plants and safe-production training.
• Food safety oversight in Kenya is spread across 12 ministries/departments and 20 Acts of Parliament, with weak coordination.
• CSOs reported that fewer than 30% of farmers had a better bargaining position through access to (digital) market information or new production and trade models.
• The role and voice of civil society on farmers' issues remained too weak in both countries.

Recommendations

• Key actors should partner to promote horticulture by assuring farmers of export markets.
• Strengthen the advocacy skills of CSO members and individual farmers.
• The governments of Kenya and Uganda should anchor horticulture in their agricultural policy.
• Because most horticultural seed is imported, governments should enable private organisations to propagate certified seed locally.
• The project should strengthen CSOs to push for better and more attractive markets for their members.

Methodology

Participatory mixed methods: literature review, household interviews with a structured questionnaire (CAPI), focus group discussions of 6-8 people with farmer groups and CSOs, and key informant interviews at national and county/district level. The plan targeted 15 KIIs and 5 FGDs per Kenyan county. The household sample size was not found in the part of the report that was read.