Microfinance Greenhouses Aid Kenya's Women Farmers, November 2009
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Photo 1 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanCatherine Lasoi Lenina is a client of Kenya Women Finance Trust, Kenya's largest micro-finance institution. She's a small farmer in the arid and semi-arid Kajiado district of the Rift Valley in southern Kenya, who aims, through a succession of larger and larger loans, to become an agro-entrepreneur, providing employment and food for her area. -
Photo 2 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanCatherine began with an electricity loan. First she erected a windmill to generate power for her homestead. Then a KWFT loan enabled her to connect to the local electricity grid. She began to imagine how reliable access to electricity, and the ability to pump and store water, could help her expand agricultural production. -
Photo 3 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanKWFT CEO Dr. Jennifer Riria visited Catherine to see how the electricity loan had helped her client. Here, Catherine shows off her three greenhouses to KWFT staff, including Jennifer (in red), Programmes Director Anne Maina, Eastern Regional Manager Isaac Muiruri and Unit Manager Simon Mbugua. -
Photo 4 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanIt was KWFT small business loans that enabled Catherine to purchase greenhouse materials. The controlled environment provides protection from the dry winds, scorching sun and droughts that are increasingly common to the area, populated largely by Masai pastoralists. -
Photo 5 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanCatherine's greenhouses have plants at all stages of growth, from small lettuces to large greens, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. Twice weekly she harvests whatever is ready and travels to the nearest market, where she sells produce to families who come to buy. -
Photo 6 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanThe year-round production made possible by the greenhouses has led Catherine to plan further expansion. Already she sells as much as she can grow, and the population of the region is expanding, so she plans to increase her production. -
Photo 7 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanCatherine tells Jennifer that her ability to produce in volume and to provide a reliable supply of healthy, fresh produce give her a chance to establish long-term relationships with the schools and institutions that are being established in the Kadjiado region. This, says Jennifer, is an inspiring model of how an initial, small KWFT loan can grow, over time, into bigger loans and then into a sustainable enterprise. -
Photo 8 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanMost people in the Kajiado district are pastoralists or subsistence farmers, whose livelihoods and food sources have been decimated by lack of water. Women are particularly vulnerable to the effect of water shortages, being forced to walk greater distances to find enough for their families. Catherine's greenhouses shield her crops from the worst of weather's ravages. -
Photo 9 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanCatherine's growing small business has allowed her to hire three employees, among them this young man who manages much of the on-site work. With his help. Catherine has built a small structure over a bore hole down the hill from the greenhouses and installed a water pump. -
Photo 10 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanJennifer examines the pump, which gets water from the deep well to the greenhouses and fields up the hill. The irrigation makes it possible for Catherine to farm year round and to avoid the devastation of more frequent and more prolonged droughts, which experts link to climate change. -
Photo 11 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanJennifer, Catherine and Anne follow the path of the well water up the hill towards the greenhouses. Nearly three years of drought were broken by recent rains - providing a bit of new greenness to the landscape - but there is still a serious water deficit in much of east Africa, where twenty million people are currently dependent on food assistance. -
Photo 12 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanKWFT is already working to encourage the widespread use of greenhouses through its loan programmes. "You are ahead of us!", Jennifer tells Catherine. "I came to see how our client had used an electricity loan," she says. "We knew she had taken out subsequent small business loans, but I didn't know she had used them for greenhouses." -
Photo 13 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanIn an industrial suburb of Nairobi. Jennifer and Anne inspect the kind of greenhouses they are negotiating to provide in volume to farmers through KWFT. The programme aims to make access to greenhouses affordable through bulk-buying cost savings and through purchase loans. -
Photo 14 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanAviv Levi of Amiran Kenya, which supplies agricultural products, including greenhouse kits, meets with Jennifer and Ann to demonstrate how the self-contained packages work. Around her neck, Jennifer wears a beaded necklace fastened there earlier in the day on her visit to a group of Masai women who are KWFT clients. -
Photo 15 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanThe greenhouse kit comes with everything needed for construction and the first year's produce, including poles, seeds, starter growing medium and trays to produce and transplant seedlings. A woman who buys a kit through KWFT can set up her greenhouse in a day - by herself, if necessary - though that would appear to be quite a challenge! Then she's on her way to fresh produce. -
Photo 16 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanAnne Maina, KWFT Programmes Director, was working at Womens World Banking headquarters in New York City when KWFT's CEO offered her the chance to return to her home in Kenya to extends the benefits of micro-finance at the community level. Anne's enthusiasm and energy is infectious - and she comes to work every day grateful to see the effects of her work on women's lives. -
Photo 17 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanDr. Jennifer Riria, a former university professor, has built KWFT into a powerful financial institution serving Kenyan women. That achievement was recognized on 1 October by the U.S. Corporate Council on Africa, which presented her with its banking and finance award at its 2009 summit in Washington, D.C. -
Photo 18 of 18Credit: Tami HultmanClimatologists are predicting more weather-related challenges for east Africa, as an El Nino weather pattern brings rains and anticipated floods to the parched, unabsorbant soils of the region. Food security will be threatened anew. KWFT is banking on spreading greenhouses among its clients as fast as possible, protecting the fragile but hopeful farm projects that keep families alive and healthy.
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