Project News

Fu Jambo? (Hello). This is our 3rd newsletter from component 2 (Value Chain and Agribusiness Promotion) in SHEP Biz. This newsletter summarizes baseline survey we conducted.

We have conducted a baseline survey from end of June to end of July 2022. This survey was carried out for setting indicators for project evaluation and for collecting information such as income of target actors, collection volume of aggregators, and information on existing value-adding activity for retailer.

In the target five counties of Thaka Nithi, Kilifi, Nakuru, Busia, and Homabay, it took a week per a county to implement the survey. We firstly drafted questionnaires a month before the survey starts and discussed with counterparts to finalize the questionnaires. We tried to make a question which can get crucial information as simple as possible for time saving. Also, we entered the questions into a questionnaire App called KoBo Toolbox to promote ICT and time saving for the survey and data collection.

KoBo Toolbox is a data collection App that works either online or offline on tablets and smartphones. There are several advantages of KoBo Toolbox, e.g., i) entered information on the tablet is saved automatically in the cloud of KoBo Toolbox in real time, ii) collected data is automatically analyzed, iii) developed questionnaires can also be printed on paper, so that we can continue the survey even if tablet or smartphone runs out of battery. A project member gave lectures and demonstrations on how to use KoBo Toolbox to counterparts, and they understood how to use KoBo Toolbox.

We started the survey from Thakara Nithi and collected information by interviewing actors in the value chain (VC) such as farmers, aggregators, exporters based on the developed questionnaires on KoBo Toolbox. It was sometimes tough for interviewers, namely counterparts, to reach interviewees which scatter in areas. We visited place of interviewees directly in some cases, and we have asked interviewees to gather in one place depending on the situation. Based on the collected information, we together with counterparts will grasp the current situation, set project goals, and brush up support measures.

This was the outline of our baseline survey. We will keep on reporting our project activities on a regular basis from now on! We will implement pilot interventions starting from TOT training to solve the issues on value chain for each county and crops.