This brief explores the approach employed by Fintrac Inc. on the USAID Kenya Agricultural Value Chain Enterprises (KAVES) project in its first two years of implementation, sharing successes and lessons learned.
Smallholder agricultural development projects face the challenge of achieving substantial positive socioeconomic gains at the population level, cost effectively. Focus on impact, scale, and efficiency is necessary. The solution may be found in the commercial diffusion of practical technologies to a critical mass of rural smallholder farmers. This can enable them to meet market demand, thereby stimulating investment in new services from local private sector providers.
Intervention description
The KAVES field methodology to achieve early-stage direct impact and scale initially focused on identifying three primary factors: (1) local partners with existing smallholder outreach; (2) existing and opportunistic market systems; and (3) proven labor-saving technologies that increase smallholder productivity and competitiveness.
Evidence methodology
Evidence is from the analysis of surveys undertaken by the project team into inputs suppliers and farmers.