- The workshop seeks to equip KENAFF leaders with the necessary skills to identify the priority value chains in their respective counties and develop a position statement to be presented to their respective CECs.
Thogoto, Kikuyu – 3rd February 2022. The KENAFF Value Chain Development Series Workshop TORs took place on 3rd and 4th February 2022 at the Farmers Conference Center, Thogoto, Kikuyu. The two-day workshop brought together over 28 KENAFF leaders spread across the country in the agri-food sector, with the main objective being “enhancing KENAFF grassroots’ leaders’ capacity to understand the ASTGS in order to enhance their capacity to engage with the county governments on agricultural and livestock development as well as to appreciate value chain based agricultural transformation.”
The workshop was informed by a number of factors, most especially Agriculture being a fully devolved function under the constitution of Kenya (2010) which underscores the importance of County governments in ensuring food and nutrition security for the country. With this, Kenya National Farmers’ Federation (KENAFF) organized this workshop to equip grassroots KENAFF leaders with the requisite skills, knowledge, experience-sharing and management practices to catalyze agricultural value chain driven transformation and development at the County level.
During the two-day workshop, there was the need for the participants to understand the priority value chains for participating counties as well as to participate in the development of CIDPs by articulating the relevant issues affecting their respective counties’ priority value chains.
Ms. Judith Libasi, while facilitating, highlighted several key topical issues on the value chain approach. The topics raised included value chain thinking, value chain concept, why promote value chain, factors of assessing value chain competitiveness, and sequence of the value links facilitation process, among others. She further grouped the participants into three to discuss different value chains in the agri-sector. In Kenya, there are currently about 100 different value chains. According to ASTGS prioritization, certain value chains are more likely to raise small-scale farmer incomes and offer dietary diversity, such as potatoes, horticulture, and poultry.
The expected outputs and outcomes for the workshop were as follows:
- Leaders can identify the priority value chains in their respective counties
- Leaders can develop a position statement to be presented to their respective CECs
- Value chain development plan for specific county-based priority value chains (Commodity situation; value chain analysis and mapping; value chain development strategy; organization/institutional arrangements for VCD; monitoring and evaluation).
- Participants will submit a re-entry action plan (REAP) outlining how they will use, the learning gains in the course
- Training evaluation
- Farmers can effectively engage the county government in developing the Finance Bill, County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP), Fiscal Strategy Papers, County Budget and Review Outlook Papers, Governor’s Day with farmers, CASSCOMs and County Farmers’ Forum, etc.