Extending the Impact of Agriculture in Kenya

Growing up in Kenya, Peter Ojiambo was raised on a family farm. But in the east African nation, farming isn’t the large-scale business that it is in the United States. It’s a way of life, says Ojiambo, with subsistence agriculture as the primary path for farmers rather than farming as an entrepreneurial endeavor.

Now a professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University, Ojiambo is dedicated to supporting the growth of agriculture in his home nation, particularly among women and youth. For the past five years, Ojiambo has been building a partnership between NC State and the Kenyan government with the goal of creating outreach and extension programs for farmers there, in conjunction with CALS International Programs and its Connecting Research, Education and Outreach (CREdO) program. The latter program, which has also been established in Peru, is the brain-child of Jose Cisneros, the director of CALS International Programs.

“This is my way of giving back, and that’s something that I’m very passionate about because there’s a lot of potential and human capacity in Kenya, but they just need some support and additional training,” says Ojiambo, who earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in agriculture and plant pathology from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, before completing his Ph.D. in plant pathology from the University of Georgia. “We want to bring the government, universities and private sector together so that they can all read from the same page and make sure that there is improvement in the livelihoods of the people who need help.”

To build on that effort, NC State’s CALS International Programs and Global One Health Academy last year hosted officials from Kenyan universities and organizations in Raleigh as part of the East Africa Symposium aimed at discussing collaborative research and capacity building initiatives. Then in May, six CALS faculty members traveled to Kenya to explore potential partnerships and collaborations on outreach and research projects there. In addition to Ojiambo and Cisneros, director of CALS International programs, faculty who went on the trip include:

• Liz Driscoll, youth development specialist for 4-H
• Peter Ferket, professor of poultry science
• Chadi Sayde, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering
• Basheerah Enahora, assistant professor of agricultural and human sciences
• Harry Daniels, professor of applied ecology

“We know that extension is one of the big problems that we have in most African countries, so we wanted to come and help connect research, extension, education and outreach by involving stakeholders and the private sector, the universities, institutions and county and national governments,” says Ojiambo. “We wanted to bring people together and say, ‘How are we doing? What are we doing? And how can we do better in a sustainable way?’ Investments in extension take time to be realized and thus the challenge is how do we encourage the government to make a strategic investment alongside other more pressing areas, where outcomes can be realized fairly quickly. 

“Primarily, we want to promote extension because we know that a lot of [new resources and tools in agriculture] are being generated that can help farmers increase productivity and improve their livelihoods, but these technologies are not necessarily reaching the intended farmers,” Ojiambo continues.

While in Kenya, the NC State cohort visited a number of organizations and officials in Nairobi and rural communities. They also visited the University of Nairobi’s College of Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences at Kabete campus, the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), an aquaculture facility and an agricultural garden. The University of Nairobi and KALRO currently collaborate with NC State on a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded project to enhance the production of African indigenous vegetables among women and youth in Kenya.

Ojiambo hopes the trip will result in partnerships between the faculty and local governments and organizations to develop programs and research projects that can showcase the power of outreach and create buy-in for extension efforts in Kenya.

So far, they are off to a good start. Enahora is working on a grant proposal focused on empowering Kenyan women farmers to participate in school meal value chains and Sayde is leading a USAID proposal under the CREdO umbrella to address agricultural water management and mechanization service in Kenya and Malawi. Additionally, Driscoll sees opportunities to work with KALRO to aid the foundation’s efforts to establish a Kenyan Youth Institute. Ojiambo says the group is also investigating funding opportunities to develop and scale sustainable aquaculture technologies, innovations and practices in Kenya to enhance food security and stabilize the livelihoods of smallholder fish farmers, especially women and youth.

“We are hoping to be able to take advantage of these efforts to galvanize momentum so that when we start looking at establishing extension activities in Kenya, we can leverage our efforts with what we already have and the partnerships that we already have instead of starting from scratch,” Ojiambo says.