Project overview

Kuza One is a digital platform that provides training and collaboration opportunities to smallholder farmers and agripreneurs in Kenya, helping them grow their businesses and earn viable incomes.

The problem

Smallholder farmers produce a large part of Kenya's food supply. However, smallholders face multiple challenges at production and marketing levels that hinder their productivity and livelihoods, including limited access to markets, agricultural inputs, credit, and technologies.

Uneven access to agricultural extension services significantly hinders smallholder farmers' ability to address these challenges. The current ratio of public extension workers to farmers is 1:3500, compared to the recommended 1:400; reaching smallholder farmers in rural and remote areas may be particularly challenging and costly for service providers.

 

Kuza One
Despite producing much of the world’s food, smallholder farmers tend to be food insecure themselves: globally, they form the majority of people living in poverty. Photo: WFP/Andy Higgins

 

 

The solution

Web-based platforms such as Kuza One offer new opportunities for transforming smallholder farming. Through its REDI programme, Kuza One trains young people from rural communities to become agripreneurs.

Agripreneurs join the OneNetwork digital marketplace and connect with service providers to offer bundled services to smallholder farmers, such as access to high-quality input, crop advisory, credit, and market linkages. They each support 200 smallholder farmers to help them boost their productivity and incomes.

The extension services are provided for free and are sustained through transaction commissions.

The way forward
3,500
agripreneurs onboarded and trained
14,083
smallholder farmers reached
US$ 569,937
value of transactions processed

 

Throughout the WFP Sprint Programme, Kuza One aims to scale its agripreneur model across 29 counties in Kenya to enhance the resilience of smallholder farmers and their communities. More than 3,500 agripreneurs have been onboarded to support over half a million smallholder farmers to date.

As part of these efforts, the project is also collaborating with WFP's Farm to Market Alliance to provide mentorship and access to its digital platform to 15 farmer service centres; as a result, their revenues have doubled in the last harvest season.

 

 

Last updated: 07/07/2022