Legacy Programs

Technical and Institutional Innovations for Linking Agri-SMEs to Markets in East Africa: The First Six Years of Kilimo Trust

To achieve this, Kilimo Trust awarded grants to public and private organizations to enable them to help groups of smallholders to engage with the private sector, improve their profitability, and scale-up the most promising innovations and best practices. The Trust forged partnerships with national and regional organizations that share its vision and complement its set of skills and experience.From its formation in July 2005, Kilimo Trust has worked to enable smallholders (producers and other agro-entrepreneurs), who are the backbone of most agricultural value chains in East Africa, to (i) increase productivity; (ii) establish viable investable entities able to do business with other investors in agriculture including commercial banks and large agribusiness; (iii) improve post-harvest handling, value addition and marketing; and in doing so (iv) improve their livelihoods.

Regionally, the Trust has engaged the EAC Secretariat, the EAC Legislative Assembly, and the Presidential Summit to support strategic planning to improve regional approaches to food security, agricultural trade, and international trade negotiations.

More than 50 projects were initiated and most were completed as of December 2011. Some of these legacy projects were funded directly to grantees, while other were funded through major programmes such as the Maendeleo Agricultural Technology Fund (MATF), which was funded through FARM-Africa's; and the EAC Tree Biotechnology Programme. In this publication we highlight our successes and critically review the lessons we have learned through these projects.

Building Institutions For Private-Private Partnerships

Building private-private partnerships is based broadly on the idea of helping smallholder farmers to become ‘business ready’ by forming producer and marketing groups and linking those to commercial markets – something they are unable to do as individual smallholders. We have helped to build many partnerships across East Africa, identify viable commercial market opportunities, improve on-farm production, and develop supply chains that connect farmers to markets. Some focused on basic staples such as maize and soya bean, and others on wide range of cash crops such as barley for the malting industry, African indigenous vegetables, organic vegetables, onions, cassava, mushrooms, garlic, cashew, honey, poultry, fish, silk, and essential oils.

Enhancing Market Support Infrastructure

If smallholders are to improve their livelihoods then they must have access to reliable wholesale markets their produce. While farmers in most Asian countries already do this, wholesale markets in Africa are lagging behind and those that have been developed generally have inadequate facilities and huge problems of congestion, waste, and pollution. In view of this we have funded initiatives to look at the potential for wholesale markets in Nairobi and Kigali.

Building and Financing the 'Missing' Medium Scale

Across East Africa commercial banks are cash-rich but this rarely goes to agriculture. Although the sector generates 50-70% of national incomes and is the region's largest employer it receives less than 3 percent of total commercial lending. Even then, agricultural investment focuses on plantations, horticulture, and export crops. Smallholder farmers are largely neglected, even though they are the principal contributors to food security in the regional economy. They are considered too risky for lending. Kilimo Trust has worked to address these disparities.

Commercializing Technical Innovations

Kilimo Trust has been supporting the commercialising of technical innovations in key areas of food and energy security. Programmes and projects supported included the following:

Leadership on Supportive Policies and Strategies at Regional Level

All governments have a responsibility to develop robust and effective evidence-based policies for economic growth and food security. But good data on which to base policy is seldom available. Although all East African Community (EAC) Member States have policies on agricultural development, food security, and nutrition, they have a number of weaknesses. Kilimo Trust commissioned a number of strategic studies and organised high level regional meetings and discussions to strengthen well-designed food security policy and strategy for the region.

Strategic Studies Commissions by Kilimo Trust

Strategic studies commissions by Kilimo Trust include: