Over the past years, the Kenya National Farmers’ Federation (KENAFF) has supported the devolution of agriculture to the county level by devolving and strengthening her county branches to better serve farmers of Kenya – KENAFF believes the pathway to meaningful and sustainable socio-economic transformation in Kenya runs through the agriculture sector where farmers play a critical role.
Indeed, farmers form the largest proportion of the Kenyan population, and the main drivers of the agriculture sector, which is key to Kenya’s economy. Agriculture contributes 26% and 27% of the country’s GDP directly and indirectly respectively; employs more than 40% of the total population and more than 70% of Kenya’s rural population. The sector also accounts for 65% of Kenya’s export earnings; provides livelihood (employment, income and food security needs) for more than 80% of the Kenyan population, and contributes to improving nutrition through production of safe, diverse and nutrient dense foods.
Incidentally, about 75% of the agricultural output in Kenya is by smallholder farmers spread all over the country and practicing mixed farming systems. The farmers of Kenya bear the greatest burden in turning the country’s economy and are the only hope for the meaningful and sustainable socioeconomic transformation envisaged in Kenya Vision 2030.
Furthermore, KENAFF recognizes that the only way to achieve the aspirations outlined in Kenya’s Vision 2030 of a middle-income economy with all citizens leading to high quality and healthy lives is through a transformed agriculture sector. Consequently, KENAFF remains committed to working with farmers, national and county governments, the private sector, Kenya’s development partners and all other sectoral stakeholders towards this realization.
Unifying the voice of Kenyan farmers
KENAFF believes that for transformational development imperatives to be achieved while making our country food and nutrition secure, we must safeguard the interests of all Kenyan farmers by mobilizing and organizing them to speak in one accord, the Farmers’ Voice.
In pursuit of this goal, KENAFF, the apex umbrella farmers’ organization in Kenya has been registering all farmers by establishing a robust, credible and up-to-date national farmers database. This database seeks to provide the national and county governments with solid data on farmers and farming in Kenya; support the roll-out of the objectives envisaged in the Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy (ASTGS 2019 – 2029), and enhance the organization and integration of Kenyan farmers into a formidable value chain based as well as county-based farmers’ association.
When this happens, Kenyan farmers shall have an effective and influential voice in policymaking and access to credit. It will also enable farmers to negotiate and enjoy farmer-driven insurance services, legal and accountancy services. Indeed, it will strengthen the farmers’ voice in the market; provide Kenya’s development partners with meaningful data on farmers to better focus resources and efforts; and promote the practice of data-driven decision making in the agri-food system in Kenya.
The role of data and technology in transforming agriculture
The critical role data plays in agriculture cannot be denied. The Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy states that “it is important to acknowledge the impact of data on decision making in agriculture. Improved data can help farmers and the ecosystem supporting them, including agribusiness, extension officers, input vendors, traders and all levels of government, to better optimize inputs for production, increase production forecasting accuracy and realize many other benefits.”
Towards this end, KENAFF has turned to technology to support operations in registering, mobilizing and organizing farmers all over Kenya. The shift to technology has also been compelled by the new normal occasioned by Covid-19 pandemic. Along with a mobile-based applications system that captures comprehensive data about farmers, value chains, location, size of enterprise, challenges, service and input providers, KENAFF has also developed a dedicated Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code, *501#, on the Safaricom network in Kenya.
Benefits of the KENAFF USSD code platform
The KENAFF USSD code platform enables farmers to receive up-to-date information on Covid-19 mitigation and resilience building; seasonal weather updates; market and market facilitation services as well as technical advisory services support on crops, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture as well as apiculture, pastoralism and farm forestry.
The simplicity of the USSD code technology will continue to enable millions of Kenyan smallholder farmers, usually not reached by extension services, get equipped with information and knowledge that will lead to informed decisions and outcomes in their agricultural enterprises. KENAFF believes that the USSD code platform has the potential to become a strong organizing tool for mobilizing and registering farmers along value chains, and ultimately, a sound, credible and real-time national farmer database with which to augment the imperatives envisaged under the ASTGS.
Membership categories and benefits
Membership to KENAFF is through County Farmers’ Associations, Commodity Associations, and farmers’ cooperatives. Farmer-owned businesses, as well as private sector players in the agricultural sector, are also welcome to KENAFF as affiliate members. Registered members enjoy numerous benefits including, mainly, articulation, representation, promotion and protection of farmers’ interests; capacity building for organizational development of farmer groups and associations; provision of value chain based technical advisory services; market facilitation services; knowledge sharing and information dissemination on topics of interests and peer to peer learning.
KENAFF has been a long-standing partner of Kenyan farmers since 1946 when it was founded in Nakuru as the Kenya National Farmers Union (KNFU). Since then, the federation has evolved exponentially to represent the needs of farmers all over Kenya as a distinguished entity driven by a vision to secure the interests of millions of farm families as the legitimate farmers’ voice in Kenya.
As we forge ahead, the federation’s strategic orientation is aligned to the devolution imperatives of the constitution of Kenya (2010) as we are on a course to devolve most of our operations and programmes to the county level. The process to strengthen and empower KENAFF county branches is ongoing and it is envisaged that KENAFF shall have all the county offices actively engaging county governments on all agricultural development matters.
The KENAFF strategic outlook resonates with critical regional and national development policies to ensure our lobby and advocacy initiatives are relevant, aligned to national and global development priorities and alive to farmers’ needs. The federation remains committed to continuing articulating the voice of farmers at all levels of governance, to ensure farmers’ thinking is built into relevant government polices and lobby county governments for appropriate budgetary allocations for agricultural development in the counties.
Together let us continue working towards safeguarding our collective interests, and build a stronger, more influential and member-driven federation as we strive to actualize our vision of a vibrant Kenyan agri-food system for a better quality of life and improved livelihoods for Kenyan farmers.