KP “Smallholders Agency” lands in Africa

Tags: Eastern Africa, Worldwide, Small Producers Agency

The initiating team of “Smallholders Agency” (from Hivos, IIED and Mainumby) went to Uganda and Kenya from 20 to 28 November. The aim was to find out how the knowledge program can become embedded in East Africa and to find African members for the Learning Network.

Field trips were one part of the program. They provided direct experience and discussions with organizations that work on connecting small producers to markets. The coffee growers from Bukonzo Joint are one example. The cooperative has grown to 86 groups with a total of 5016 members, more than 60 % women. They have set up their own micro-finance scheme and marketing association. The organized women used an empowering instrument on gender action learning system for individual reflection. Another example of agency and market linkage were flower outgrowers in Limuru who sell their produce to a social enterprise called Willmar Flowers that brings it to the auction in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands. Inspiring visits were made as well to the Iruha Marketing Association, the Kyondo information centre, Greenhome women’s agricultural group and the Kenya Women Finance Trust. One common theme in all visits was aside from market linkages, empowerment, independence, and sustainability.

Two Round Table discussions were organized, one in Fort Portal (Uganda) and one in Nairobi. Participants were representatives from farmer organizations, rural business, universities, umbrella organizations linking all actors in organic chains, training and service providers and rural micro-finance. Both times, the agenda focused on key themes that the knowledge program should address and on the program’s structure and process.

The meetings generated a rich array of substantive and process ideas. Just to mention a few:

• Stable domestic markets hold advantages over volatile global ones.

• Smallholders will need to invest in land and institutions; off-farm employment is often essential to generate the necessary funds.

• Local investors, local land tenure and local knowledge need to be protected against big-time outsiders.

• Smallholder agency is based in local organizations.

• The potentials of organic farming need to be explored, both for global certification and for local resilience.

• Research is needed on how to make young, dynamic people interested in farming.

• The Knowledge program’s networks and processes should be designed such that they build the ‘vertical’ link between smallholder organizations and the global debate and also are embedded in locally existing think tanks.

Striking during the field visits and the round table discussions was the universal acknowledgement of the key role of information and knowledge, of both the practical and the reflective kind. Connected to this, participants tended to question how any knowledge program could satisfy this thirst for knowledge in a 3-year project cycle. Frankly, we didn’t know either, but one thing we can certainly do to have maximum impact is commission studies in 2010 that address themes that are fundamental and common to Africa, Latin America and Asia, to connect local actors and learning to a global network such as the KP.