Nairobi — "Poverty dispossesses people," says Mark Botongore as we head north from Nairobi on our way to one of the sites of the Central Kenya Dry Area Project (CKDAP). Mark is the project manager, and for a few days we are going to be looking at some poverty alleviation projects receiving funds from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad).
Although Kenya has a land area of 583,000 km square miles, more than 70 percent of it is classified as semi-arid and 12 percent as arable but subject to periodic droughts. Only 13 percent has a medium to high potential for agriculture.
The CKDAP project sites highlight the successful restart of Ifad's efforts in Kenya, which target the poorest of the poor who, unsurprisingly, are on the poorest of the land. Ifad "suspended" its entire Kenyan portfolio in 1995 because, according to an internal 2007 review, of "poor project performance, weak management and the lack of appropriate financial accountability, including lack of audits," by Kenya's government.
Ifad's current involvement here, focused on Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Thika, Nyandarua and Maragua districts, is part of the government's larger "Poverty Reduction Strategy." The effort began in 2001 and will end in 2009.
By then it is expected that Ifad will have provided, through loans, 10.9 million dollars of the project's budgeted 18.1 million cost. If all goes as planned, the programs will be extended until 2011 through agreement between Ifad and the government, and an additional $6 million will be made available.
Not big sums, especially considering that about a quarter of a million people representing some 36,000 households are targeted; but it doesn't take much to make a difference in a region half of whose people earn below $1 a day. They are also, says Ifad, "chronically food insecure."
There are three "strategic" goals for the project: improving services to the rural poor, increasing rural incomes by improving access to appropriate technologies and markets, and expanding investment opportunities and rural financial reserves.
Rural poverty has been a continuing problem for Kenya—independent since 1964—and little headway has been made against it. Poverty and income disparities have deepened since independence, and 6.5 percent of Kenyans are categorized as the "extreme" poor, meaning they would be unable to feed themselves even if they spent every cent they had on food.
Experts agree that inroads should have been made, considering the education, resources and money that have been invested in combating poverty. But Kenyan officials openly acknowledge "wasted opportunity."
During Ifad's earlier attempts to help fight rural poverty, it increasingly became clear that part of the problem was decision-making concentrated in the capital city. After a change of government, officials in the planning, gender, finance, agriculture and health ministries began to rethink their approach and concluded that it "was a bit faulty," said Mark. Specifically, they needed to get closer to the ground.
And being "down on the ground" has meant an end to what Mark called a "helter-skelter approach." Instead, "backstopped by Ifad," the government refocused on the poorest or, as Mark puts it, "most deserving" areas.
One especially important change has been that fund requests that used to be sent to Ifad's Rome headquarters, can now be handled by Ifad in Nairobi.
The new approach has brought some small but successful Ifad-backed successes. Consider the Karathe-Thaara Irrigation Project in central Kenya.
There is greenery in this dry brown stony land—patches of string beans, cabbage and corn. Hasim Bara Bara, a government official along on our trip, says villagers formed a small organization in 2005 and dug a 450 meter-long canal to channel water from one of the streams of the nearby River Dharra.
It wasn't easy, says a man who calls himself Hashim, chairman of a 67-strong organization of smallholders. They worked from Monday to Saturday and although some gave up, as they slowly came to understand the project's value, "even some who abandoned the project returned to it."
One result is evident at a small pond where a gasoline-fueled pump channels water into plots—few larger than a quarter-acre—which produce food not just for home consumption: the green beans are French string beans for export.
Now that small farmers are seeing results, says Hashim, the group is growing. About 200 other smallholders also now benefit and are potential dues-paying members. They all share the water, and a villager is proud to tell me what they have instead of what they don't have.
A woman who speaks English explains that they are selling to companies now. "Companies come; they say I want this or that and we plant. They even give us the chemicals to spray."
Adds Hashim, "It was so hard to farm [before the canal]. People were not taking an interest in farming. You cannot have a farm where there is no profit."
And so today there is money where once there was none, says Hashim. "They get enough food to eat; that's the first point. But with the water we now grow enough to have money for school fees." The group even helps those who cannot afford the fees.
Adding an exclamation point is John, the group's treasurer: "Before, there would be nothing in this place!"
Small improvements translate into great improvements in these project areas.
Not far away, at the Wakahare Spring Water Project, a pipe running from a spring 200 meters up a hill brings water to a storage tank. Joseph Nyama, chairman of the local community group, remembers how difficult collecting water used to be when there was no way to store water and they depended on the spring's trickle:
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"It was a very pathetic place. It could take up to eight hours to fill a 20-liter jerry can. If you came at 3pm you would not leave until 11 because you would have to wait for your turn."
The community group here numbers 45 members. Mark Botongore explains that group organization is essential among the very poor. Well-off farmers can pay for individual hook-ups to piped water but a group needs a common collection point.
"We try and avoid a situation," he says, "where the very rich are the only ones accessing this water. Where the very poor cannot access water the project comes in and tries to assist."
Despite the clear need to tackle widespread poverty, he doesn't want the project's efforts to become stigmatized as being only for the poor.
"Everybody uses the health facility, and everybody needs water," he adds. "We just don't want the very well off ones to benefit at the expense of the very poor ones."
So little can mean so much is the main lesson—the first lesson that emerges from observing the work here. No one has water coming directly into their homes, but now no one is further than a 300-meter walk away from water.
A pipe. Community effort. A start. "We are talking of 40 years of independence against 600 years of dispossession," says Mark Botongore. "We are coming from down, down."
