SUPPORTING FARMERS IN KENYA: FARMHUBS

At the beginning of 2020, the GODAN Secretariat reaffirmed its commitment to the promises made in 2017 as part of the Nairobi Declaration. Formulated by the South-South Ministers of Agriculture attending the 2017 GODAN Nairobi Conference, the implementation of the Declaration was tasked to the Kenya-based Programme for Capacity Development in Africa (P4CDA). Along with the FAO, AGRA and Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives, GODAN founded the organisation with the aim of establishing a South-South Secretariat. Despite a slow start, progress accelerated rapidly during 2020, with the agenda of ‘Moving from Advocacy to Action’. P4CDA has provided measurable actions that align policy, and agriculture and nutrition data to impact food insecurity and the phenomenon of hidden hunger: Defined as insufficient diet, or micronutrient deficiencies.

Following the onset of the COVID19 global pandemic, food systems in the South-South region have been thrown into disarray, which caused traditional donors to hesitate. Kiringai Kamau, GODAN’s Africa Lead and founding Director of P4CDA says; “We are now on our feet again, with more action-focused programmes, specially aligned to support weaknesses in the food supply chains revealed by the pandemic. We shall continue to increase support as we integrate data governance paradigms to agriculture and nutrition in line with SDG 2 – ending world hunger.” 

GODAN and the P4CDA team used the challenge caused by the pandemic to establish new opportunities to work directly with SME-driven grassroots data sourcing organisations. To achieve this, GODAN expanded on earlier plans made in partnership with University of Nairobi’s Center for Agricultural Networking and Information Sharing (CANIS), reenergizing this initiative to create what have come to be called FarmHubs. The initial concept for the hubs is based on a demonstration model conceived in 2018, based on work done with the Nairobi University Student Led Extension and Advisory (SLEA).