Kenya receives €104 million from the EU to support smallholder agriculture

21 Dec 2016
Financial Nigeria

Summary

The European Commission said the financing will focus on supporting Kenya’s smallholder agriculture in areas such as access to finance, training, and market integration.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, has signed a financing agreement with the Kenyan government to provide €104 million to support smallholder agriculture projects in the East African country, according to a statement released on Tuesday.

The Brussels-based organization said the financing will focus on supporting Kenya’s smallholder agriculture in areas such as access to finance, training, and market integration. Neven Mimica, the EU’s Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, signed the agreement together with President Uhuru Kenyatta on the sidelines of the EU-African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Joint Parliamentary Assembly, which took place in Nairobi on Monday.

The first EU-backed project aims to provide medium-sized water and sanitation facilities for about 400,000 people in arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya through the Climate proofed water supply programme. The project, which will cost €20 million, will engage and benefit women and will ensure that organizational structures are in place to ensure the sustainability of the infrastructure.

Another €50 million project aims to provide better access to finance, training and market integration to small holder farmers to allow them to graduate from subsistence farming. The EU said it will allocate €34 million to a programme for legal empowerment and aid delivery in Kenya, which targets 12 counties in the country. The project will address how the marginalisation of communities could be linked to their exposure to criminal activities, including radicalisation.

“These projects, worth a total of €104 million, will have a real and tangible impact for Kenyan small holder farmers and for Kenyan people in general,” Mimica said. “In some of the dry parts of rural Kenya, farmers risk losing their crops or cattle during periods of drought. The Climate proofed water supply programme and the support to market integration of small holder farmers will help ease such problems.”


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