IFAD in Kenya

IFAD's strategy in Kenya

Since 1979, IFAD has invested a total of US$214.5 million in 15 loan-financed projects and programmes and three grant-financed programmes supporting government efforts to reduce rural poverty. Investments include US$18.0 million in grants under the Belgian Survival Fund Joint Programme –now the Belgian Fund for Food Security Joint Programme (BFFS.JP). IFAD has also mobilized additional cofinancing of about US$68.0 million from other donors. The Government of Kenya and project participants have contributed about US$56.0 million and US$11.0 million respectively.

At the end of 2000, IFAD approved its first new project in Kenya in more than six years. Current investments include five loans and one BFFS.JP grant programme. For greater poverty reduction impact, IFAD is now concentrating its efforts in areas with high productive potential, where most of Kenya's poor people live. Explicit and transparent targeting – based on poverty data from Kenya's Central Bureau of Statistics and on poverty criteria developed at the district level to identify poor communities and vulnerable groups – is now a feature of all new and ongoing IFAD-financed projects. Some current projects emphasize a market-oriented approach in the sectors of domestic horticulture, dairy production and rural finance.
 
IFAD’s overarching goal in its development partnership with Kenya is to empower rural women and men to achieve higher incomes and improved food security. IFAD supports government efforts to reduce poverty through an integrated country programme approach. The challenge is to strengthen ongoing projects while adding a robust policy and institutional dimension – to increase impact and allow for replication of successful experiences in the field. In an ongoing discussion process, IFAD, the government and other partners and donors work to balance competing development priorities, while focusing on integrating smallholder producers into vibrant national, regional and global markets for agricultural goods.

The current (2007-2012) country strategic opportunities programme (COSOP), developed jointly by the Government of Kenya and IFAD, has three strategic objectives:

• Improving delivery of services to poor rural communities by strengthening the capacity of the public and private sectors and civil society organizations;
• Increasing incomes of poor rural people by improving their access to appropriate technologies, markets and community-owned productive and social rural infrastructure; and
• Increasing investment opportunities for poor rural women and men by improving their access to rural financial services.
  
  

Country strategic opportunities programme (2007)

Source: IFAD