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This is the seventh post of Farming First’s #FillTheGap campaign to highlight the gender gap facing rural women working in agriculture.
When Beatrice Gichuru’s husband passed away around three years ago, she lost not only her partner but her also provider and guardian. Like many Kenyan women, Beatrice had relied upon her husband to provide the land she farmed.
But in becoming a self-sufficient widow, Beatrice overcame the tragedy as well as the gender gap that means only one per cent of Kenyan women own land and access less than 10 per cent of available credit.
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By Jessica Joye, Communications Director at Fintrac.
In Kenya, smallholder farmers lack access to financial services and face high barriers accessing commercial banks and community lending institutions. These institutions rarely approve loans to smallholders or have a slow turnaround time for approval, preventing farmers from getting capital when they need it in the agricultural cycle. Smallholder farmers not only face the improbability of loan approvals, but, even if approved, they often encounter hidden fees on top of already-high interest rates. To overcome these challenges, Fintrac’sPartnering for Innovation program is working with Musoni, a Kenyan microfinance institution, to pioneer and commercialize a digital model specifically targeted toward smallholders.
Musoni developed a model to reach high volumes of remote smallholder customers with an agriculture-specific “Kilimo Booster” loan. Village-based loan agents meet directly with farmers to discuss their credit needs and, using a cash flow software developed by the Grameen Foundation, can wirelessly submit farmers’ loan applications on the spot. Farmers don’t have to worry about traveling long distances to a bank or completing complicated applications requiring extensive documentation.
At many Kenyan banks, customers usually need personal or family connections in order to schedule appointments, making it difficult to inquire about loan or repayment details. In contrast, Musoni customers can receive immediate attention via walk-in appointments for any issue. Unlike many traditional Kenyan banks, Musoni wants to see its customers grow, and building personal relationships helps Musoni determine if and when customers are able to increase their loan amount or transition into other types of credit offerings. Although its interest rates are on the higher side, Musoni does not charge any hidden fees and customers have been willing to pay the higher rates in exchange for this personal attention.
Once a Kilimo Booster loan is approved, it is deposited into the customer’s mobile money account within 72 hours, ensuring farmers have timely access to the finance they need during specific times in the agricultural cycle. Musoni’s software also tracks customer information, including repayment information and changes in income, to make loan processing more efficient.
This client-focused approach benefits both customers and Musoni, which profits from reduced time needed to complete each application. Musoni also offers customers a mobile platform from which they can receive payment reminders and obtain other information about their loans, reducing the need to make visits to physical banking locations.
Michael Chege, a Kenyan farmer, also points out that “Musoni is flexible in case of disaster and willing to work with farmers to get payments in.”
In just 18 months, Musoni disbursed more than $6.4 million in loans to rural smallholders, proving its high-touch, efficient approach is gaining traction in the market. Musoni has built a reputation of valuing its customers, building relationships, and successfully applying digital technology to the smallholder market. By paying a relatively high interest rate, smallholder customers prove they place a premium on easy processes, personal and trustworthy customer service, and transparency.
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A new reality TV show from the producers of Shamba Shape Up is here to combat poor nutrition and household pollution in Kenya, Vanessa Mukhebi of Mediae Company reports.
A choking cloud of smoke greets us as we enter the room. Cramped, poorly ventilated and rectangular in shape, the room is darkened by scorched walls as black as night. As we familiarise ourselves with our newly-found surrounding, a pungent smell of burning wet firewood dissipates from the left corner of the room, dwindling the little supply of fresh air from the half-open window above the cooking station. Though it is frugally furnished, it is tidily kept, clean and telling of a simplistic lifestyle. This is Doris’ kitchen that we have just stepped into.
Doris, or ‘Mama Britney’, as she is commonly referred to, is a mother of two young children who lives in Luanda, situated south-west of Vihiga County in Kenya, whilst her husband works in the capital city. Her son, shy of his two-year birthday, cradles her leg unsure of the strangers who have just entered their homestead.
When Mama Britney smiles her well-formed and even white teeth brighten up her whole face. But as she describes to us the problems she faces in her kitchen environment, she is suddenly filled with distress. She spends more money on fuel than food, which is not only a financial strain, but affects her family’s nutrition and health. Sniffling, runny noses and irritated eyes are typically experienced by her children caused by the harmful fumes emitted from her traditional three-stone jiko, Swahili for stove. Sadly, this is characteristic of households across Kenya.
She like 15 million other Kenyans, are exposed daily to high levels of household air pollution (HAP) from using inefficient cooking fuels such as firewood and charcoal, and simple cook stoves. According to PS Kenya, illnesses attributable to HAP are the second leading cause of death in the country, leading to over 40 per cent of premature deaths amongst children. Moreover, inefficient stoves and fuels place economic burdens on families, spending up to 30 per cent of their income on purchasing fuels.
At the same time, nutrition is a limiting factor for rural Kenyans, and costs the country millions of dollars in lost earnings and health complications, such as stunting and low brain development. Rural Kenyans eat a diet that is high in starch, low in protein and vitamins, and that does not vary. The result being that 35 per cent of children under five are stunted, millions are micronutrient deficient, not only young children but also adults and in particular lactating mothers, and it’s the poorer families who suffer the most.
With such alarming figures, it is clear that the need for an alternative, cleaner, fuel efficient and healthier option for cooking is growing increasingly paramount in Kenya.
This is where we come into play.
Shamba Chef is the new sister TV program to Shamba Shape Up, which will primarily focus on cleaner and more efficient cook stove adoption, as well as tackling wider issues associated with nutrition. Shot throughout Kenya, the series will delve into real households to explore new ways to cook, making it quicker, safer, cleaner and at half the cost.
It will be dedicated to rural and peri-urban women such as Mama Britney, transforming their kitchens, conducting cook-offs between neighbours and featuring popular Kenyan chefs who will highlight cultural food preferences from around the country, and demonstrate how to cook tasty and nutritious meals from locally available food. It will also include nutrition experts promoting the benefits of a well-balanced diet and how to maximise nutritional opportunities for the family by growing your own food.
Viewers at home will be able to subscribe to the show’s mobile information service and call centre, iChef, to get additional content on where to purchase energy saving cookstoves of their own as well as nutrition tips.
The aim of the show is to improve their cooking methods, warm them up to changing their practices around their family’s health and nutrition, and to fuel the uptake of cleaner more efficient cookstoves.
However, it all boils down to the fact that changing food practices is in many ways more difficult than changing agricultural practices. In both, traditional practices may be slow to change in the face of a rapidly changing environment. Dietary incentives and effects are all much less obvious. The needs are often not perceived and established tastes are felt to be inviolable. Daily routines are precious and food choices are permeated by status factors; meat is culturally perceived as a ‘man’s meal’.
But we believe that the proof to affect change is in the pudding! Mediae has a proven track record of delivering media productions that are highly effective at impacting on people’s knowledge, attitudes and practice. For instance, in 2016, 80 per cent of the people who watched Shamba Shape Up learnt something new from it, and 43 per cent of the audience actually adopted a new practice they learnt on the program. Building off this, the program is a potential recipe for success.
So watch Shamba Chef, as we meet families, enter their homes, and find out what happens in Kenyan kitchens. It is sure to be worth its salt!
Shamba Chef airs Sundays and Thursdays at 1:30pm on Citizen TV Kenya. For more information, visit the Shamba Chef website, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
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Vanessa Mukhebi of Mediae Company, reports for Farming First on the latest TV series from the production company that created Shamba Shape Up.
We’ve all seen it before. The archetypal symbol of agriculture in Africa is more often than not an elderly African woman spending back-breaking hours in the sweltering sub-Saharan heat tending to her crop fields with a hoe in hand.
The problem with this imagery is not necessarily in its ubiquity, but that it is representative of an underlying issue in the sector: there is a lacklustre perception of agriculture amongst young people. Whilst there are several push factors such as limited access to capital and land, for majority of the world’s youth, agriculture isn’t considered as a viable or ‘cool’ career venture. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the average age of farmers in Africa is about 60, despite the fact that 60 per cent of Africa’s population is under 24 years of age. Continue reading →
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Partnerships between public and private sectors offer diverse ways to boost productivity and incomes, helping smallholders escape the trap of low yield, low investment, low income. Farm Africa is working with supermarket Aldi to help Kenyan farmers end hunger with better results.
Joseph Kaunda, a young father of two from Kitale in western Kenya, is no stranger to the challenges of trying to earn a decent living from farming. Faced with pests and diseases, yet unable to access pesticides, he used to struggle to bring in a good harvest. And even when he did, lack of links to markets meant the crops would sometimes rot before he found a buyer, and with them went his chances of making a profit.
“When the market is not available, sometimes things go rotten on the farm,” he said. “When things rot, I get very discouraged. You spend a lot of money buying seedlings and tilling the farm. When you do not do well, it takes a while to get the capital to start again.”
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Whilst many challenges facing Farming First’s supporters can vary from region to region, we also stand to gain much from sharing our common experiences, to identify relevant solutions. With this in mind, we recently interviewed farmers from opposite ends of the world, to find out which concerns and interventions – if any – they shared.
Beatrice Wakwabubi, a Kenyan farmer with Farm Africa’s Growing Futures initiative, and Jean Lam, a member of the National Farmers’ Union in the US, who works a no-till operation in Oklahoma, US, may seem to have little in common. But like many farmers in today’s uncertain climate, both women told Farming First that financing, rising costs and land access were their main concerns.
Beatrice called on her government to offer better financing options for smallholders to lease or buy their land, thus giving farmers greater security and incentives for investment. Jean added that as competition for land increased and farms continued to expand to remain competitive, young farmers would need low interest loans to incentivise them. Although their own experiences were vastly different, their concerns showed two sides of the same coin.
At the same time, a major challenge for Beatrice is the fertility of her soils as she diversifies and begins to grow French beans. A good way of avoiding preserving soil health is no-till farming, a practice that has already yielded results for Jean.
The scale of their farms, access to credit and markets, and environmental conditions may be greatly different. But today’s farmers also face many of the same challenges and can learn much from one another. Read the full interview with Beatrice and Jean below.
