Becky’s Kenya Blog

Rebecca Forecast, the Co-operatives for Development Programme Assistant, recently traveled to Kenya, where she conducted research on the capacity-building impact of co-operative development. The CEEDCO (Community Empowerment and Enterprise Development through Co-operatives) project run by the Swedish Co-operative Centre in Kenya has been working with producer co-operatives for over a decade, focusing on organisational development and in particular on agri-business development such as value-addition initiatives (see photograph caption) and diversification of farm enterprise.

Rebecca visited four co-operative societies in the Central and Rift Valley regions, and conducted interviews with members and managers to understand the impacts of the project.  Prior to the work with CEEDCO, the co-operatives had faced many challenges, including poor management and record-keeping, lack of access to market information, and many of their members were unable to afford farm inputs. Dairy co-operatives in particular had been struggling to find markets for their milk in the face of a national surplus. Today their situation is different; the co-operatives had all increased their production and in doing so were providing their members with higher incomes and greater livelihood security.

Kenya – March 1st 2010

So, it’s been going well. I arrived in Nairobi and after calling in to the Ministry for Co-operative Development, went to the Swedish Co-operative Centre (SCC) headquarters to meet the staff there and look through their database. They have been keeping records of producer/farmer co-operatives they have worked with in the past, showing trends over time such as production rates, payment to members, involvement in value-addition initiatives (which enable producers to access more of the value chain). They also have data about members themselves such as household incomes, quality of their shelter, access to healthcare etc. The idea was for me to select some co-operatives to study, examine trends in their data, then visit them and do interviews to explore those trends and find out how co-operative development has helped them, and what challenges they still face. I am focusing on how they are faring since the SCC finished working with them, whether they are sustaining themselves or not, and from this examining the kind of support co-operatives need in order to succeed and contribute towards the poverty reduction of their members .

March 3rd

After Nairobi I travelled down to a town called Machakos, from where I could access the village where one of the co-operatives I was going to study was. The area is very dry, and has suffered very badly from the drought (2008-2009). The first co-operative I visited was a dairy one. Members across a wide area bring their milk from their cows to the co-operative, where it is weighed and recorded (and cooled, pasteurised and packaged). At the end of the month they receive a payment. Through doing it large-scale, the co-operative is able to invest in transporting the milk to market- otherwise, each individual member would have to do that alone- which when you consider the costs, time, and poor infrastructure is not feasible – and the milk goes off quickly in these temperatures! The co-operative also provides farmers with farm inputs, such as feed or medication for cattle, and then just deducts this from their end of month payments. This really helps people –without the co-operative, if they are unable to afford to feed the cattle, the cattle may die (or produce less milk) and before they know it they have spiralled into poverty. This way, they keep afloat during difficult times. These “advances” really helped them in the drought. Of course, you need a strong co-operative for this- one problem many of the weaker ones (which are less able to provide members with loans) encounter is that members, unable to wait for end-of-month payments, are forced to sell to middle-men at a much lower price. This not only means they earn less, but itself lowers the production of the co-operative.
After interviewing the co-operative management committee, that afternoon I visited two farmers and they explained to me how the co-operative had helped them- by giving them access to information about ways to artificially inseminate cows to improve and increase their stock, diversify their crops so that they are not dependent on one single one (dangerous if the market price falls). It was great to walk around their homesteads whilst they proudly showed me what they had achieved – although there were of course still a number of obstacles, and ways in which their co-operative could be doing more, if it had the capacity.

March 4th

Today I travelled to Thika- from where I could access a coffee growing co-operative the next morning. I held a focus group discussion with about 12 farmers in the shamba of one of them, Benjamin. This was a rather eventful meeting- new people kept arriving (the area was so remote with very poor transport. 3 women arrived about an hour in, saying they had waited 2 hours for a matatu (local bus) to get there) Through the co-operative, they were selling coffee in bulk to the markets, rather than individual farmers having to rely on middle-men coming to their farms and buying from them at a low price, taking a huge profit. The group certainly had a lot to say, they were extremely driven, and as well as marketing coffee through the co-operative they had lots of ideas and energy for alternative income generating activities, which they firmly attributed to the work of the SCC. They had formed groups to do bee-keeping (for selling honey on the local market), mushroom growing and other activities. Their problem was getting the projects going, large scale, without income – although they have savings in the co-operative, they said they could not afford to keep sending people on training courses, even though they saw this as the best way to bring knowledge and skills back to the whole group, as members really needed the village savings and loans (where each member puts a small amount of money in and loans are made when people need it) for paying school fees, or coping with their lack of income due to drought. It was inspiring to hear about their plans and how they thought they could get there, but was also really frustrating to see the challenges they were facing.

When we had finished the discussion, I was taken around Benjamin’s homestead, and he showed me his 10 banana trees- everyone in the co-operative had agreed to plant 10 trees, using special tissue culture and then they were going to market the bananas together and share the income. The co-operative had organised some training about coffee growing at a nearby centre that afternoon, and as my next interview was at that centre, we offered the farmers a lift in the back of the pickup. Benjamin said he couldn’t come as his daughter was sick and he couldn’t leave her. His 21 year old daughter was diabetic and suffered from kidney failure. He said he would really like me to meet her, and so we went into the house, with all the other farmers following. She looked extremely ill, she was very skinny, couldn’t really walk, and had gone blind (apparently a complication during a transfusion) but she was really pleased to meet me and we chatted for a bit. Her parents had to take her to Nairobi (about 60km away) for dialysis 3 times a week. This was at 15,000 shillings a go (a lot of money here), and as there are only 2 dialysis machines in the country, they had to get there for about 2 am to queue up to use it. I couldn’t imagine how they did that long journey on the bus 3 times a week. Benjamin said the co-operative had really helped him to keep his income up, although he had been forced to sell his pigs when feed prices went up after the post-election violence (as did the prices of everything) and he also still had to rely on friends for support to cover the costs.

After that interview I went to interview the management of the co-operative, and when I had finished, 3 of the women farmers, having finished their training, had waited outside on the grass to see if I had time to pop by and see their mushroom growing project. I went and saw what they had been doing-after receiving training from the SCC they had built a mud hut and each put in money to buy mushroom seeds and started to grow them, to sell on a local market. A major challenge they had come up against was people selling fake seeds – they are not certified, are put in fake packaging, and so although the members had saved up collectively to buy them, when they planted them, nothing grew. This has been a problem for a lot of farmers I interviewed, although with some of the larger co-operative groups, the co-operatives are bulk purchasing seeds direct from certified manufacturers in order to ensure they are genuine.

I have also been interviewing district co-operative officers in the regions where I have been examining co-operatives- to look at external factors which might affect the successes and failures of the co-operatives. This has been really interesting. I was very lucky to interview a provincial officer too, who was able to tell me a lot about upcoming changes in government policies for co-operatives.

My impression from these interviews is that the situation of each co-operative is very different, depending on the particulars of district they are in, the competition they have from other co-operatives and so on. Co-operatives which deal in commodities such as coffee really struggle in terms of improving gender equality, as coffee trees are culturally owned by men (as is most land and livestock), so even though women do most of the work in picking, milking etc, and even deliver the goods to the co-operative for marketing, the men are the ones who get to cash in their payments and vote on decisions within the co-operative. In the co-operatives SCC has worked with, although the leaders and members still seemed mainly male, they were mostly of the opinion that it was time women were seen as equal and they were trying to encourage them to be more active- easier said than done but then women’s roles are very deep-rooted culturally. What has seemed to help though, is these Village Savings and Loans groups- where people each put in some money and then the group gives out loans to start income generating projects. Many women are taking this up, I interviewed one lady who had used one of these groups to buy her own chickens. Likewise, youth, who normally have no access to land until their fathers die and they inherit it, are using these VSLAs to generate agri-business projects of their own. The Village Loans have also been helped individuals to start up enterprises, for example, one man I interviewed had taken out a loan to buy a motorbike, which he was using to start a transport business.

March 8th

I spent the weekend with a family in a village called Kyumbi, which SCC previously worked with. Although this was not officially one of the co-operatives I was studying, I found I learnt a huge amount. Elizabeth belonged to the Kyumbi dairy co-operative, and had achieved a lot through it- she had started poultry keeping and had a greenhouse for tomatoes. She and some others had also formed a small group, each putting in money until they had enough to build a dam in which to harvest rainwater. This had really helped them during time of water scarcity and they already had their sights set on saving up to build more. She was extremely active and driven. She had 4 children, Lumumba (the oldest at 19), Linda, Laura and Lenny . There was a real sense of community in the area they lived, and people were milling in and out all day and night. Elizabeth had a 2 dairy cows and they had to be milked 3 times in every 24 hours. Every morning, Lumumba would ride his bike up to the co-operative to deliver the milk. On the Sunday morning, it had rained so much that Lumumba was unable to ride the 6 litres of milk in the urn up to the co-operative through the mud, and so was going to walk (a good few kms). I said I’d go with him and it was hilarious- the mud was so deep, I was all over the place and kept falling over. By the time we got there I was caked in mud – in the end I just took my shoes off and waded through it barefoot back home. I was ready for my mandazi and milk when we got back!

The co-operative had also started producing yoghurt with the excess milk- this was great- as before, people were having to return home with half their milk, as there was not enough of a market for it. With the yoghurt it can last longer, and be sold beyond the local market. The co-operative was using some of the profit it made from collective marketing to buy the culture to make the yoghurt. The co-operative had helped a lot during the drought when people had no hay for the cows, by bulk purchasing it from upcountry (where drought had not been so bad). Lumumba and a group of friends had decided to set up a co-operative of their own, to rear fish – they had a meeting while I was there and they were each going to put in 100 shillings for it. I really hope it works for them- they said they will keep in touch and send me pictures as the project progresses. Eventually they would like to market the fish in hotels in Nairobi! Why not aim high?! I know it is obvious but it’s amazing what people do when they co-operate! One group of women I met had faced difficulties in accessing milk. Dairy cows are expensive, but pedigree goats are cheaper and produce a lot of milk. What they did, was each put in a bit of money (there were 28 of them) and agreed to do so every month, for 28 months. Each month, they had enough money for one of them to get a goat- and after 28 months they each had one. They then got advice about how to cross-breed the goats to get pedigrees. Imagine the patience and trust you need for something like that- if you pick the number “28” out the hat, you have to trust the 27 before you to keep paying out!

I was a bit delayed leaving them this morning as it had rained again and it was impossible to get out until the sun had dried it a bit. I was very ready for a shower (non-bucket) and still quite muddy, but when I got back to Nairobi, was meeting the SCC straight away to hitch a lift with them down to Kericho, where I am now. Kericho is tea growing country- there are acres and acres of it. It was a beautiful drive across the rift valley. Yesterday and today I went to do more interviews with co-operatives and district officers, and I head back to Nairobi tomorrow.