Questions/Answers

The initiative facilitates the integrating of gender and social inclusion considerations, especially women and youth in agriculture value chain development (VCD) in 47 Counties in Kenya. The initiative addressed the following challenges (Annex 1): i) Few institutions in the agriculture sector have strategies for mainstreaming gender; ii) Lack of designated gender budgets except for bi-laterally supported programmes; iii) Low gender capacity and awareness; iv) Gender mainstreaming in most institutions is left to gender units while other programme staffs are not made to account for gender. The nominee facilitated the development of gender policy, gender based violence Strategy for Agriculture sector, gender and social inclusion strategy and action plans (Annex 2). The strategic action plan is a key tool for (Annex 3): i) Mainstreaming to operationalize and integrate gender in each Agricultural Sector Development Support Programme (ASDSP) component; ii) Guiding partners on how to identify strategic entry points for women, youth and other excluded groups in VCD; iii) Effective allocation of resources, services and opportunities to increase agricultural productivity and improve incomes of women, youth and other excluded groups in VCD. The initiative has institutionalized mechanisms to coordinate and supervise the integration of gender considerations in VCD. It strengthened its focus on gender-responsive budgeting, tracking and reporting. Programme and social audit teams, committees of experts have been trained on gender-responsive planning and budgeting. Women and youth actors are facilitated to access support to build on their initial successes. It leverages opportunities for engagement of women and youth in decent work, value chain structures, organizations and local decision making organs. The nominee’s staffs were recruited competitively while observing one-third gender rule. Women were encouraged to apply. A special package is provided to suckling mothers.

To enhance basic socio economic and organizational conditions that enable the vulnerable groups, especially women and youth to effectively engage in agricultural value chain development. This objective requires a two-pronged approach to developing equitable opportunities for women, male/female youth and vulnerable groups to engage in and benefit from modern commercial agriculture. Firstly, by improving the basic social, economic and organizational conditions that affect the ability of women, youth and vulnerable groups to engage in commercial agriculture. By seeking to ensure that the decisions and actions of the various value chain stakeholder bodies are as inclusive as possible, within the overall objective of ensuring that the value chains are commercially efficient and viable. Operationally, all staff and partners apply principles of equity, diversity and inclusion to ensure that the needs and interests of vulnerable groups, women and youth are equally reflected in the identification, planning, implementation and review of programme activities. Power and influence is more equally distributed between women and men including the youth in the programme teams, decision making bodies and value chain organizations while observing the one-thirds gender rule commitment by the Government of Kenya.

The initiative is designed to contribute to the delivery of SDG 5; achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, to which the Government of Kenya has made a commitment to deliver by 2030 in one of its outcome areas. By focusing on improving organizational conditions that affect the ability of women, youth and vulnerable groups to engage in commercial agriculture, the initiative is responding to the following criteria: i) introduces an innovative idea/policy/practice/or structure that promote the participation of women in value chain development ii) Provides access to high-quality, affordable services for women iii) Promotes transparency, accountability in service delivery to women iv) Promotes participation of women in decision making and delivery of public services to women v) Promotes gender parity in public service vi) transforms administration. Also the initiative explicitly integrates women’s and youth social and economic empowerment into all aspects of its programme cycle which responds to the evaluation criteria of providing access to high-quality, affordable services for women and promoting responsiveness to the needs of women.

Culture continues to play a big role in how gender issues are perceived and addressed and most often these are projected in the institutions and programmes supporting the sector. Women, though active in value chain are concentrated in lower, less profitable levels, the youth are generally poorly engaged. The vulnerable groups participate on the margins, or not at all, of the value chain process. This initiative identifies who to work with and to understand their opportunities and constraints. Upon this understanding capacity development strategies tailored to the key characteristics of each target group are developed. Such initiatives are effective in alleviating the constraints and maximizing the opportunities experienced by a particular group thus preparing them effectively for value chain engagement. It also facilitates the removal of organizational barriers through policies, strategies, regulations and plans development for: operationalizing and integrating gender considerations in programmes; guiding partners on how to identify strategic entry points for women and youth value chain actors and enhancing incentives to increase access by women and youth to assets and development opportunities. All people feel valued, their differences are respected, and their basic needs are met so they can live in dignity.

Women and youth actors face higher entry barriers than adult males in value chain development as they have less access to assets, credit and markets. Culture also continues to play a big role in how gender issues are perceived and addressed and are projected in the institutions edging out women and youth from key leadership positions. The initiative has institutionalized mechanisms to coordinate and supervise the integration of women and youth considerations in value chain development. It strengthened its focus on gender-responsive budgeting, tracking and reporting. Programme and social audit teams, committees of experts have been trained on gender-responsive planning and budgeting. Incentives (innovation grant) have been established for women and youth actors facilitating access to support to build on their initial successes. It leverages opportunities for engagement of women and youth actors in decent work, value chain structures, organizations and local decision making organs e.g. trainings as community level workers to provide artisan and technical services to other value chain actors at a cost, growing and accelerating women initiatives into small and medium enterprises. The nominee’s staffs were recruited competitively while observing one-third gender rule. Women were encouraged to apply. A special package is provided to suckling mothers.

About 35% women hold key positions in the programme team. National programme Coordinator and four of the six speciality areas are headed by women. Staff ratio at County level is: 153 Women, 278 Men (Annex 4). About 60% value chain organizations are women based with 75% functional. Women actors can pitch their innovation and take charge of the value chain processes. Growing innovative ideas by women for women has stabilized household food consumption by transiting them from highly dependent support systems to self-supporting systems. About 33 and 232 women are active artisans and chicken brooders respectively bringing an income of KES 522,000 (US $ 5,220) (Annex 5). Esther of Ywaleteke in Chepareria Ward earns KES 144,000 (US$ 1,440) as an artisan, KES 30, 000 (US$ 300) from chicks, KES 182,000 (US$ 1,820) from chicken with an income of KES 356,000 (US$ 3,560) (Annex 6). Monica, a dairy producer from Baringo earns KES 1,584,000 (US $ 15, 840) from sales of milk annually (Annex 7), Towfiq camel milk processors, chills and pasteurizes 300 litres of milk/ day earning KES 90,000 (US $ 900) (Annex 8). Sparrow processor earns KES 10,000 from mango juice, jam, wine and peanut butter (Annex 9).

Culture continues to play a big role in how gender issues are perceived and addressed. Most often these are projected in the institutions and programmes supporting the sector. Integrating gender and social inclusion considerations in value chain development (VCD) in a country where culture defines how women issues are handled is an innovation in its self. It is also an innovation because combining commercial viability with gender and social inclusion in value chain development is a significant challenge as well as an opportunity. It is a challenge because women, youth and vulnerable groups face constraints that limit their competiveness in commercial VCD. This hampers the effective and efficient functioning of these chains thus reducing their commercial viability. Previously, the sector has had stand-alone initiatives targeting women, youth and other vulnerable groups. Instituting mechanisms for overcoming their constraints and maximizing their contributions with-out isolating them is also another key innovation to successful VCD e.g. establishing incentives to grow innovative ideas by women for women and youth actors facilitates access to assets, credit and markets. Subjecting women and youth value chain organizations to a competitive process in-order to gain access to this innovation grant awakens their creativity and gives them a voice.

Although agricultural value chain development has been done in other countries, however, facilitating a gender responsive and socially inclusive commercial agricultural value chain development is an original innovation in Kenya. Commercially viable agricultural value chain actors by their very nature are driven by profit and therefore cannot tag along with women, youth and vulnerable groups who face constraints that limit their competiveness in commercial value chain development. This innovation faced a lot of resistance from the implementing teams as they felt that the vulnerable groups would hamper the effectiveness and efficiency of the chains thus reducing their commercial viability. Moreover, establishing incentives through innovation grant to grow innovative ideas by women for women; and youth for youth actors to facilitate access to assets, credit and markets is an innovation of its own kind that can be up-scaled. More often than not, practitioners believe that; women and the vulnerable groups lack innovative ideas, leave alone being in a position to pitch and articulate their needs including the public services they want most. By subjecting women and youth value chain organizations to a competitive process awakens creativity, innovation and voice. One of the best livestock feed innovators in Kenya is a woman.

The critical point to be made is that gender and socially inclusive value chain development costs money and other resources and this can only be realized if partners ( Governments, private sector, NGOs, bilateral, multilateral partner, community based organizations) pull together with other actors who are mandated to work with women, youth and vulnerable groups. The public sector provides an enabling environment for the development and implementation of policies, strategies, regulations, action plans and programmes for the realization of SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls to which Kenya has committed to achieve by 2030. Strong partnership was brought to bear in the implementation of the initiative as follows: Agricultural Sector Development Programme (ASDSP), the lead facilitator and nominee established an innovation grant by women innovators for women and youth for youth innovators worth KES 11,000,000 (US $ 110,000) to incentivize these actors to build on their initial successes. Gender responsive value chain proposal development was funded to the tune of KES 781,393,634 (US $7,813,936.34) from ASDSP and KES 2,955,420,683 (US $ 29,554,206.83) from partners. The creativity of private sector actors contributed to turning value chain actor constraints into marketing opportunities.

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Culture continues to play a big role in how gender issues are perceived and addressed. Most often these are projected in the institutions and programmes supporting the sectors and much more so in Africa. Integrating women and youth economic empowerment into all aspects of any development initiative cycle (design and implementation) including access to support is essential. The key elements that could be transferred include: i) institutionalizing mechanisms to coordinate and supervise the integration of gender and social inclusion considerations in value chain development, ii) enhancing the capabilities of women and youth to participate in agriculture related key decision making organs at the national, county, local and household levels, iii) instituting mechanisms for overcoming women and youth constraints in value chain development while maximizing their contributions with-out isolating them is key in successful value chain development for example, establishing incentives to grow innovative ideas by women for women innovation grant) and youth actors to facilitate access to assets, credit and markets, iv) Subjecting women and youth value chain organizations to a competitive process in-order to qualify for any grant so as to awaken their creativity, innovativeness, voice and ownership of the entire development process.

The initiative promotes innovative resource mobilization and cooperation between different actors in order to increase resources and synergies between public, private service providers, NGOs and develop agencies to incentivize the women and youth to take an active role in value chain development (VCD). Women and youth value chain organizations were formed, linked to relevant service providers and trained on gender responsive proposal development. The social audit teams were formed in 47 counties to ensure that the value chains were inclusive. The Government of Sweden has signed a bilateral agreement with the Government of Kenya to continue supporting agricultural VCD through the Agricultural Sector Development Support Programme II (ASDSP II). In this agreement, gender responsive VCD holds a central place where no funding can be given without justice done on gender and social inclusion. To this end, the nominee has come up with a grant mechanism to support value chain innovation with high prospects for women and youth empowerment in ASDSP II scheduled to take off in February 2018. It has also facilitated the development of other programmes in the sector to champion the youth agenda in agribusiness. ENABLE youth is such a programme that is being supported by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Government of Kenya to facilitate the integration of youths (Male and female) in value chain development through the incubation process. Both ASDSP I and II has an output on environmental resilience. The nominee facilitated Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) on the programme, developed environmental resilience strategy and guidelines and constituted environmental resilience team of experts to ensure that the environment is protected from the activities of women and youth and that the value chains are cushioned from harm by the environment and human activity. ASDP II is also focusing on climate smart agriculture.

The initiative has institutionalized mechanisms for integration gender and social inclusion considerations in value chain development (VCD). The nominee has facilitated the development of the following documents for the sector and programme: i) gender policy, ii) gender based violence Strategy, iii) gender and social inclusion strategy, iv) strategic gender and social inclusion action plan v) county gender and social inclusion action plans . Extensive efforts to further develop gender-responsive tracking and reporting have been put in place through the agriculture sector and programme’s information monitoring system (MIS) (Annex 10). The nominee also has institutionalized mechanisms to coordinate and supervise gender responsive VCD. It has reached out to diverse set of stakeholders (civil society organizations, government representatives, private sector actors and academia) to create a group of experts prior to the start of programme and implementation. The group’s key role is to support the process of engendering the programme documents and implementation framework, priority value chains selection and integrating women and youth considerations in the programme cycle. The group of expert also carries the vision further to ensure that gender responsive public service delivery becomes a practice in their places of work and in the agriculture sector in general.

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The end term evaluation (ETE) was conducted by a team of experts from the Agriculture Sector who were not involved in the actual implementation of the programme including the initiative. A structured questionnaire was development being guided by the programme log frame indicators. The team used field survey, focus group discussions and key informant interviews to determine the performance of the Programme including the initiative based on the following criteria: i) relevance, ii) effectiveness, iii) efficiency, iv) impact and v) sustainability. The ETE was conducted for a period of 60 days between November 2016 and March 2017 with an objective of establishing the Programme’s impacts by analyzing its implementation mechanism, achievements, challenges and lessons learnt. Twenty out of 47 counties were purposively selected to represent the entire country. Selection was done on the basis of regional balance, value chain types and the predominant agro-ecological zone. Secondary data was collected from all the 47 counties. Primary data was collected by trained data collectors from 2,406 randomly selected ASDSP supported Value Chain Actors (VCAs) and at least 240 other VCAs who did not benefit from the programme. Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews were also conducted.

Some key milestones realized in integrating gender and social inclusion considerations in value chain development (VCD) include: sector gender policy, ASDSP I gender and social inclusion strategy, Sector Gender Based violence Strategy (GBVS), an assessment report on social economic factors determining investment and participation of women and youth in in value chain development (VCD) and gender and social inclusion action plans and growth pathway in the 48 implementing units. These will present the first set of data source on how to engage with women and youth in VCD in ASDSP II. Some notable impacts include: i) increase in income for female headed households by 25% and youth by 15%, ii) improvement in household food and nutrition security across all gender divide with an increase from 86.1% to 87.4% on households whose food consumption patterns has stabilized, iii) On farm employment increased from 1 to 2 employees per household. About 37% of the employees were women and 63% Men. Off-farm employment increased from a baseline of 0.1 to 0.5 employees per household. Majority of the employees among the value chain actors were youth aged between 18-35 years, 54.1%. There was an increase in the participation of youth and women in VCD.

The indicators used were drawn from the programme’s log-frame including the initiative. The initiative indicators were guided by the main objective of initiative and the specific objectives. Specifically, the outcome indicators included: i) On-farm income increase by 5% p.a. in both male and female-headed households by 2017 ii) Off-farm income increase by 6% p.a. in both male and female-headed households by 2017 iii) Gender disparities in on-farm and off-farm incomes reduced by 20% by 2017 iv) Food and nutrition security level increase by 10% in both male and female-headed households by 2017 v) Household asset index for women, youth and vulnerable groups increased.The output indicators included: i) No. of value actors involved in decision-making at local level by gender and vulnerability ii) No. of functional common interest groups (CIGs) linked to value chains (VCs) iii) No. of community organizations with internal governance systems iv) No. of VC actors using market information by gender and vulnerability v) No. of VC actors using financial services by gender and vulnerability vi) No. and types of VC organizations formed vi) Number of actors who are members of VC organizations by gender and vulnerability v) Number of VC organizations with functional linkages.

The initiative was implemented under the Agricultural Sector Development Support Programme(ASDSP) in Kenya. It was a sector programme implemented by the Government of Kenya (GoK) and the Swedish Government in collaboration with interested development partners. The stakeholders in the ASDSP include the sector ministries, all administrative tiers in the sector, parastatal agents, private sector agribusiness actors, civil society organizations particularly farmer organizations, and bilateral and multilateral Development Partners. The Government of Kenya provided the human resource to implement the initiative, a conducive environment and funds for operationalization of the initiative. The Swedish Government provided fund to operationalize the programme. The role of the private sector is to turn constraints in market opportunities, mentoring agri-preneurs, development and provision of inputs, insurance and finances. Agricultural cooperatives participate in the procurement of inputs, production, value addition and marketing. The Research institutions include KALRO, KEMFRI, KEFRI, ILRI who are responsible for generating knowledge and technology and adaptive the technologies and practices into particular setting. Other partners who provided social protection service providers included: NAAAIP, World vision, Caritas, National Government, County Government, GIZ, Anglican Development Services (ADS), Action Aid; Ministry of Gender & Social Services, National council of persons with disabilities, Kenya human rights, SOREC, Liver pool international, Youth department, KCB foundation, Adventist relief agency (DRA), APHIA PLUS, NDMA, World vision, Plan International, Y – MAP, Exodus- Kenya. National cereals and produce board, ADESO, and RPLRP, GIZ, Farm concern, among others. The following NGOs worked with ASDSP to grow the women and youth in value chain development: YADTSI, Hand in Hand East Africa, KAVES, TECHNO-SERVE gave capacity to the women and youth in value chain development

The lessons learnt during the implementation of the initiative include: i) Women and youth value chain actors still face higher entry barriers than adult males in value chain development as they have less access to assets, credit, services and markets among others, thereby hampering the implementation of their action plans, ii) Most Women are visible in the production and trade functions of the value chains, with operations characterized by low capital investment, small scale operations and unskilled labour, iii) Most youth are visible in transportation (boda boda) and production with systems that largely are unorganized and characterised by unskilled labour. Therefore, any support to the women and youth actors should build on the roles they are already playing in value chain development. To further improve the initiative, practitioners should consider the following: i) Institute innovative funding mechanisms to improve their access to resources ii) Strengthening value chain segments with high prospects for women and youth empowerment, iii) Creating more opportunities for women and youth engagement in male dominated value chains through innovation grants, iv) Creating decent work in a gri-based economies and establishing mentorship programmes to incentivize the youth particularly graduates from Universities and Colleges to become agri-preneurs.