CRAFT learnings inform Kenya's Climate Smart Agriculture Multi Stakeholder Platform
The Climate Smart Agriculture – Multi Stakeholder Platform (CSA-MSP) Strategic Plan, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Framework and the CSA Manuals were recently launched at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya with support from various development partners including the CRAFT Project.
“This Strategic Plan is important because it provides a framework for implementation and climate actions that need to be implemented in Kenya to combat and mitigate climate change,” says Harold Mate, CRAFT Kenya Project Manager.
The following items were launched:
the Five-Year Strategic Plan (2022 and 2026) which will provide strategic direction and guidance in facilitating the adoption of appropriate Climate Smart Agriculture practices, technologies, inputs, and services
the Climate Smart Agriculture M&E Framework, which will support transparent monitoring and reporting of climate actions
and Climate Smart Agriculture Manuals whose development was supported by the CRAFT project will focus on the Potato, Green Grams and Beans value chains.
The CRAFT project was well represented by André de Jager, the SNV Managing Director of Agriculture and Energy Sectors and Harold Mate, the Kenya CRAFT Country Project Manager.
Harold Mate speaking about the manuals.
The CRAFT project supported the launch of the CSA MSP Strategic Plan 2022-2026 by incorporating its learnings and expertise into the CSA value chain training manuals for bean, green gram, potato and sorghum.
This is a result of the project’s membership in the Kenya Multi Stakeholder Platform on climate smart agriculture and is integrating project learnings and trainings across a wide range of counties in Kenya.
"The CSA training manuals will be important in providing technical guidance to our farmers and other key value chain actors for them to adopt CSA practices," says Anne Nyaga, Chief Administrative Secretary Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.
The launch was well integrated with exhibitions whereby CSA initiatives implemented by MSP members in various parts of the country were showcased their initiatives to the participants. The CRAFT team showcased their recently launched Climate Smart Agriculture Manuals for the potato, sorghum, green grams and beans value chains which will integrate issues of climate change and agriculture, detailing CSA practices and technologies that assist smallholder farmers build resilient farming systems.
This will enable farmers to prepare for the anticipated future climate change impacts, increase productivity and income as well as conserving the environment.
The manuals also provide information about climate smart solutions throughout the production cycle that can cushion farmers against effects of climate change. The solutions include soil-water and conservation measures, renewable and energy efficient interventions, mechanization and provision of Climate and Weather information. The interactive format was universally appreciated by the various participant groups and actively contributed to our concrete cooperation.
“The agricultural sector is greatly affected by climate change through increased temperature, unpredictable weather patterns and extreme events such as floods, drought and storms. To address these challenges, innovative and transformative measures are therefore urgently required to assist value chain actors to adapt and cope with effects of current and projected change in climate patterns,” says Oscar Nzoka, the Climate Smart Advisor of the CRAFT Project.
“The use of CSA practices and technologies have been identified as viable approach to provide solutions towards increased productivity while addressing impacts of the changing climate.”
The manuals will assist in disseminating information including innovative climate smart and environmentally friendly pre-and post-harvest Integrated Crop Management (ICM) practices as well as presenting new technologies and innovations to address emerging challenges and opportunities in the bean producing counties of Kenya and beyond. These manuals will therefore link climate change issues to agriculture while also providing a variety of available solutions to protect farmers from the effects of climate change.
Written by: Carol Songa, Junior Consultant Communications for CRAFT
More information: The Climate Resilient Agribusiness for Tomorrow (CRAFT), is a five year project, implemented in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda with focus on three pillars; increasing adoption of climate smart practices and technologies amongst farmers and agro-enterprises; increasing investments and business growth in climate smart value chains; and creating enabling environment necessary to ensure large-scale roll-out of market driven climate smart agriculture. The project is passionate about women and youth inclusion as one of the indicators seeks to increase the number of women and youth employed in the private sector. The cross-cutting workstream for gender and youth inclusion emphasizes targeted interventions where needed, to ensure equity and inclusion through a sustainable gender sensitive climate smart service provision.