World Bank approves US $250 million for Kenya Climate-Smart Agriculture project

Climate Smart Agriculture, the project objective for Kenya is to increase agricultural productivity and build resilience to climate change risks in the targeted smallholder farming and pastoral communities in Kenya, and in the event of an Eligible Crisis or Emergency, to provide immediate and effective response.

The project will have five components. The first component of the project will include upscaling climate-smart agricultural practices. This component will finance interventions that promote and facilitate increased productivity, enhanced resilience (adaptation) and reduced GHG emissions (mitigation) per unit of output (as co-benefits).

The second component is the strengthening climate-smart agricultural research and seed systems. This component will support the development, validation, and adoption of context specific CSA TIMPS to target beneficiaries under components one and three and also develop sustainable seed production and distribution systems.

The third component is the supporting agro-weather, market, climate, and advisory services. This component will finance the development of agro-weather forecasting and marketing information system and their dissemination tools through three subcomponents: improving agrometeorological forecasting and monitoring; using big data to develop a climate-smart, agro weather and market information system and advisories; and building institutional and technical capacity for agro-meteorological observation and forecasting, agricultural statistics collection and analyses, and market advisory services.

Other components will include project coordination and management. This will see the financing of activities related to national and county-level project coordination and management, including developing annual work plans and budgets (AWP&Bs), fiduciary aspects.

The loan from World Bank, comes at a time when the country is struggling with low rainfall levels in late 2016 that have intensified drought conditions leading to food and water insecurity in arid and semi-arid regions.

The drought has already triggered livestock deaths, crop failure and school closures. This month, the Kenyan government warned that without urgent and appropriate action, Kenya risks conditions similar to the severe drought in 2011.