Almost 200,000 small-scale farmers are generating vital household income, thanks to a Kenyan agri-business investment support project run by Self Help Africa.

Country Director Peter Okoth said this month that the AgriFI Challenge Fund had reached 192,000 farmers in six years.  In total, 30 Kenyan producers, processors and service businesses received grant funding from the AgriFI Kenya Challenge Fund, to support the creation of thousands of new jobs, and new markets into which farm families have been able to sell their harvested goods.

Businesses across Kenya have benefitted from the EU and Slovak Aid backed multi-year project, which invested over €20m in strengthening the small and medium sized agri-business sector in the East African country.

AgriFI Kenya Challenge Fund supported companies engaged in the processing and trade of commodities including fisheries, fruit and vegetables, nuts, vegetable oils, animal hides, cotton, coffee and much more.

The challenge fund specifically sought to support businesses operating in ‘hard to reach’ areas, where jobs and markets were limited. It provided investment funding to one company that provided mobile veterinary services to remote communities that included semi-nomadic herders, and to another business that bought and processed gum Arabic that was being harvested by nomadic tribespeople from acacia trees in Kenya’s far north.

The AgriFI Kenya Challenge Fund was an initiative of the European Union that was designed to support productive and market-integrated smallholder agriculture through the provision of financial support. The fund also aimed to improve the capacity of smallholder farmers/pastoralists to practice environmentally sustainable and climate smart agriculture as a business, in inclusive value chains.