Kenya: New Partnership to Boost Food Security
By Ben Omondi
The Safaricom Foundation /KCDF partnership - which is called Ustawi (Swahili for prosperity) - aims to address food security issues among vulnerable communities which depend on rain-fed agriculture by encouraging them to adopt modern farming technologies like greenhouse farming, drip irrigation and water harvesting and conservation to grow food for subsistence and commercial use.
The Ustawi initiative has proved that by supporting farmers to adopt modern farming methods, Kenya can move from food reliance on relief food to food security, in spite of the vagaries of weather.
In Ngomeli area of Mwingi (about 3 hours East of Nairobi), a community based organization – the Ngolanya Community Aid Programme (NgoCap) – has been harvesting water from the biggest rock water catchment project in East Africa which is situated in the area to grow food alternatively, in the process serving over 34,000 people in Ngomeni and Nguni divisions of Mwingi district.
Mr Julius Muthui, caretaker of the greenhouse facility at Ngomeni said in an interview thatthe NgoCap greenhouse was funded by KCDF through sponsorship from Safaricom Foundation.
“The greenhouse was installed in April 2010 while operation and planting was started by May 2010. I set up the drip irrigation system before planting the first seedlings on the seedbed and setting up the tank,” said Mr Muthui, adding that the greenhouse unit, sourced from Amiran Kenya, cost about US $ 1,875.
Already, members of NgoCap are harvesting kales (sukuma wiki) from their greenhouse which mature at two-week intervals with capsicum harvesting expected in future as the plot is still being transplanted.
“We have harvested tomatoes from July last year, with the harvest being sold locally via Ngomeni market and surrounding areas,” said Muthui.
The Ustawi initiative has significantly changed the fortunes of NgoCap, which has for the past decade been working with communities in Ngomeni, in areas like water and sanitation; early childhood development (ECD); health and HIV/AIDS.
The initiative has enabled NgoCap to address one of its previous consistent challenges - persistent food shortage brought about by drought – which was affecting other programmes which the organization was implementing like child nutrition, health and economic empowerment.
In 2010, KCDF, through the Ustawi initiaitive, helped NgoCap to acquire and install a greenhouse unit for growing food as well as to establish a food store project to cushion framers from exploitation from middlemen.
The result of the initiative is enormous, with its impact being felt on the ground. Already, over 6,200 households have benefitted from training on food security; vegetables grown in the site and in other drip irrigation sites are currently supporting over 30 ECD centres and around 3,500 children both directly and indirectly. NgoCap is also supporting feeding programmes with proceeds from the greenhouse project.
Les Baillie, Safaricom Foundation chairman said that the foundation has for the past four years worked with KCDF, contributing about US $ 187,500 towards the Ustawi initiative.
“Greenhouse farming and drip irrigation does not require a lot of water, which makes it ideal for water scarce areas. The 40 kgs of tomatoes harvested from greenhouses daily goes to enhance food security with the surplus being sold for household income,” said Baillie.
Noting that improvement of livelihoods was key to the foundation, Baillie added that the Safaricom Foundation has also received US $ 750,000 from Safaricom and US $ 175,000 from Vodafone to support its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
“We intend to move from demo sites to household level where farmer households can adopt and implement new farming technologies,” said Baillie, adding that the Ustawi initiative aims to encourage farmers to start using new farming technologies like water harvesting “instead of letting water run to the Indian Ocean.”