New strategic plan seeks to boost smallholder farmers’ productivity
By: Rading Biko
Posted on Monday, November 15, 2021
The Micro Enterprises Support Programme Trust (MESPT) has launched a new Strategic Plan 2021 -2025 that aims at transforming smallholder agriculture into a modern sector.
This new strategy has identified agricultural entrepreneurs as key actors and beneficiaries of the transformation.
According to the Ministry of Trade, Industrialisation and Enterprise Development, Cabinet Secretary, Betty Maina, said that further development of the sector is key to poverty reduction and economic growth, and therefore remains central to the National Agenda, as demonstrated by the presence of Food Security as one of the Pillars in the Big Four Agenda.
“MESPT is known as a champion for Smallholder Farmers and Agri-SME Growth through their work in capacity building, business advisory services, agricultural financing solutions, value-chain and market systems development. They are consistently working and building a portfolio of Sh6.2 billion sustainable financing which has so far been disbursed to 36 Financial Institutions and 250,000 end-users through 55 financial products.
The CS pointed out that “Most remarkable is the creation of a total of 70,000 jobs at various levels of the market system, the engagement of 100,000 farmers in various value chains and the generation of Kshs.6.8 billion total sales turnover by the targeted small-holder farmers. The SME sector in Kenya is the life force of the Country’s economy constituting about 98 percent of all the businesses in the country employing about 15 million Kenyans and generate 80 percent of new jobs annually.”
As enablers of development, MESPT’s new Strategic plan also provides a comprehensive roadmap on how its development work will respond to pressing economic and social needs in the agriculture sector. This is evidenced in the identified four priority thematic areas which will inspire MESPT’s work for the next 5 years.
The priority areas include Agri enterprise development (MSMEs), access to finance, agricultural production & food safety, and (4) green transformation.
The new Strategic Plan also provides a critical developmental focus and a compass for our plans and actions in contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Kenya’s Big Four Agenda, and the blueprint Vision 2030. The Strategy demonstrates our commitment to facilitate the creation of 5,000 decent jobs, establishment and growth of at least 100 sustainable agri-enterprises, integration of at least 75,000 smallholder farmers in targeted value chains, increasing agricultural productivity and food safety for 75,000 households, increasing awareness, investments & adoption of green interventions as well as expanding the financial inclusion and access for MSMEs growth.
MESPT is committed to changing lives and building a prosperous society. To achieve the desired results in the new strategic plan, we will endeavour to leverage greater strategic partnerships and collaborations with stakeholders from both the private and public sectors.
