14/02/2016

Matching farmers with traders and schools on Kenyan coast

To increase coastal farmers’ access to the Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) market in Kenya, the Partnership for Child Development (PCD), Imperial College London and SNV recently organised a matchmaking event between farmer and cooperative groups, traders, schools and local government officials. During the event business connections between farmers, traders and schools were established to allow more farmer produce to be supplied to Kenya’s Home Grown School Meals (HGSM) programme.

The event also taught specific lessons on procurement processes and business plan models to increase farmers’ entrepreneurial skills and revenues. Lessons learnt were supported by visits to farmer groups, schools and trader shops to enable stakeholders to see first-hand the practicalities of the programme’s production processes, supply and delivery, and during a plenary session, participants contributed their views and question