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Kenya receives Sh28.7b from World Bank to boost farmers

Friday, April 1st, 2022 05:08 | By
World Bank. PHOTO/Courtesy

World Bank has approved $250 million (Sh28.7 billion) credit to support 500,000 small-scale farmers in Kenya in 26 counties currently engaging in nine value chains.

The approved International Development Association (IDA) finance is designed to support a new national agricultural value chain development project to build on the foundation set by two existing World Bank-funded projects.

The two projects include National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project and the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project and will mostly focus on a subset of farmers drawn from these two projects.

Farmers targetted are in dairy, poultry, fruits (banana, mango, and avocado), vegetables (tomato and potato), coffee, cotton, cashew nut, apiculture, and pyrethrum value chains.

Keith Hansen (pictured), World Bank Country Director for Kenya said the new project will unlock new opportunities for maximising finance and private sector investments in the nine value chains through a range of value chain investments.

Subsidy targetting

“It will also enable initiatives such as improved subsidy targetting through e-vouchers and operationalizing warehouse receipt financing,” he said. The bank Keith added, “will engage intensively with private sector value chains to crowd in investments in agri-business opportunities such as input supply, access to finance for farmers and small and medium enterprises.”

Keith said the project will deepen investments in existing interventions around productivity enhancement, community-led farmer extension, water management and data driven value chain services, introduce intensified investments into the select value chains.

Vinay Vutukuru, Senior Agriculture Economist and the Task Team Leader said the implementation of the digital agriculture initiatives, farmer-led irrigation development initiative and the safer urban food systems initiative are innovative and will provide insights for future World Bank initiatives in these areas. 

“Under the urban food system pilot, climate smart agriculture technologies will be promoted and scaled up for urban and peri-urban farmers and market linkages between rural producers and urban consumers will be strengthened,” he added.

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