Kenya: Canadian Agribusiness in Africa Window Ends Its Kenyan Programme

24 November 2022
Capital FM (Nairobi)
By Elvis Omondi

Nairobi — The Agribusiness in Africa Window - Round 2 (AAW-R2) - a $20 million Canadian programme co-funded by the Canadian government through the Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and AGRA has come to an end.

The program that ran for the last 10 years offered funding to agribusiness enterprises and was implemented by Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF).Over 19 enterprises drawn from 11 countries across Africa received financial, material and technical support to scale up.The beneficiaries of the program were ventures working in various food value chains such as maize, banana, moringa oil, and legumesVictoria Sabula, CEO of the AECF hailed the program as revolutionary especially to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs ) in rural Africa."This programme has demonstrated the essence of investing in close-to production downstream processing facilities that create markets and reduce costs for rural, smallholder producers while increasing incomes, impacting lives, and providing opportunities for value addition." Said Victoria Sabula the CEO of AECF.Out of the 19 SMEs listed at the beginning only two went under with the remaining 17 thriving representing a suceess rate of close to 90%.The business that received funding were drawn from Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Burundi/DRC.The Canadian High Commissioner to Kenya Christopher Thornley expressed the commitment of his country to supporting sustainable agriculture based SMEs across Africa to expand. "I look forward to seeing AECF's growth as Canada and other partners continue to support small and medium enterprises on the continent, particularly those that are women-owned and women-led. I know the lessons we have learned from the Agribusiness in Africa project will undoubtedly lead to even stronger outcomes in the future." said Thornley.The beneficiaries were challenged to enhance productivity, decrease post-harvest losses, diversify product offerings and create jobs in critical agricultural value chains.Agnes Kalibata the President AGRA reiterated the need for farmers and farm based businesses to access financing and modern technology to increase their profits." Farmers need access to appropriate, affordable technologies for producing resilient, quality crops and a fair chance to benefit from the fruits of their labour." Said Kalibata

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