Project News

The 4th Project Starring Committee (PSC) meeting was held!

The 4th Project Steering Committee (PSC) meeting was held on 13th July 2022. Ms. Malenge, called Mama SHEP who had been the Kenyan representative of the SHEP project retired at the end of May, and it was the first PSC meeting under the project's new structure. Ms. Alice was appointed as acting National Project Coordinator until Ms Malenge's successor is formally placed. Ms. Alice has rich experiences including agricultural engineering and processing in SHEP project and Agribusiness component at SHEP Biz.

The purpose of the 4th PSC meeting is to get approval for the FY2021 activity/financial report and the FY2022 activity plan in line with the Kenyan budget year ending in June. In the project activity report, the Project shared the case of collaboration in Output 1 with an organization called Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA), which is engaged in business operator-type agricultural extension. FtMA nurtures entrepreneurs called Farmer Service Center (FSC), entrepreneurs in communities to sell agricultural inputs and services and aggregate produce from farmers for buyers on a commission basis. Through the SHEP Approach, FSC customers (farmers) are expected to discover markets for diverse crops and become self-reliant for selling at local markets. That will increase income of the farmers and promote their re-investment in agriculture, which is expected to increase earnings of FSCs who serve them with agro-inputs and agriculture related services, thus, the collaboration between FtMA and SHEP Biz was realized. The FSCs also provide service linkages with private and public stakeholders for their business and build the capacities of farmers on good agricultural practices.

Recently, the number of organizations or projects working on business-based agricultural extension in Kenya, such as FtMA, is increasing besides public agricultural extension, and further expansion of the SHEP Approach is expected through collaboration with these organizations. The Project also reported the activity of Output 2 that 20 sub-counties and 100 farmer groups were selected for the 2nd batch of 10 counties.

Regarding the revision of the Project Design Matrix (PDM), which did not reach agreement at the previous PSC, after conducting a baseline survey and analysis of the Agribiz component, the Project will set appropriate indicators and submit it to the next PSC for approval.

While there were various opinions and advices on the shortage of counterparts and budget management from the PSC members, all the agenda items were approved. In the activity plan, for Output 1, the Project is planning to discover new partner organizations and monitor the organizations that have collaborated so far, and for Output 2, the Project will conduct a series of training for the 2nd batch counties!

4th PSC meeting

Training for FtMA stakeholders on market survey