Kenya

Blog 12 August 2008 Kakamega, Western Province, Kenya

Well – Happy Dave is back on the road beginning another different adventure. After almost two years of working in Agricultural Development for Africa, I have learned a lot about the priorities, problems and styles of working in order to improve the lives of small resource-poor farmers. I remain committed to using Science and Technology to help achieve these ends, but now add Enterprise to the bag of tricks that I think will work.

Essentially I want to helping all involved to see and create value from their work and be able to feel the rewards. I think it is essential that the farmer values the seed she/he’s obtained. The person getting the seed to the farmer and the company, NGO (charity), or research institute producing the seed must also be rewarded. Without the sense of value from the farmer’s perspective, she will not treat for the new seed or technology with appropriate methods, water and care in order to get the best from it. Development interventions are all too often short-lived and/or very localised in scale due to lack of incentive to reach enough farmers over a long time period. If the disseminators experience the sense of value they will ensure this does not happen.

However, I have been painfully aware that, despite wanting to use Science, Technology & Enterprise to help small farmers in Africa, I have been painfully aware that I have only ever met 3 small farmers. As such, I don’t have genuine first hand knowledge of those people I want to benefit. I needed to experience working directly with my stakeholders so that my experiences can confirm, contradict, clarify or deepen some of the things I’ve learned about them from chatting in pubs or reading authoritative reports.

This is why I’ve come to Kakamega.

So, at the kind invitation of Paul Seward, I’m going to spend the next 2 months working with FIPS-Africa (Farm Input Promotions Africa – www.fipsafrica.org). I’ll be placed in Kakamega, in Western Province of Kenya. If you look on a map, its about an hour’s drive north of Kenya’s third city, Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria.

I left Nairobi yesterday with Musau and Gichuki driving quite slowly in a 4 tonne truck out west from Nairobi. Two hours drive got us about half way along a fantastic newly built road to Nakuru (home of the flamingos and white rhinos). The next many hours along bumpy roads got us less far to the Kericho – in the heart of the Tea Picking lands for Unilever’s PG Tips, Lipton and Brookebonde. It was strange driving across the rift valley – the area before Kericho suffered some of the worst tribe on tribe violence during the post-election clashes in December/January. A number of burned out houses could be seen by the road-side and people still living as IDPs (Internally Displaced People) in tented camps outside several of the villages.
“Why are they still there?” I asked Musau as we drove past. “The election was 7½ months ago.” From seeing Kenya in Nairobi, this was a reasonable question. There is a reasonably functional Grand Coalition between members of both parties; the country has returned to a state of nervous normality with more mistrust but most things happening. Some people have even said that the IDPs just want to keep having an easy life and being fed by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) and WFP (World Food Programme).
“You can’t make them go home!” replied my new friend. These people have had their houses and farms burned by their neighbours. People they once considered to be friends. If they return back, notes are put through their doors saying ‘You don’t belong! If you stay, you will be killed.’ What can they do? Where can they go? Would you take your family back to the place they’d been for 60 years if that had happened to you?”

Food for thought!

Anyway – it was getting towards 6pm so we stopped for the night in Kericho before heading on towards Kakamega this morning. Today we negotiated access to some great new varieties of Sweet Potato developed by KARI (Kenya Agricultural Research Institute) and squeezed 75 large bags of vines into a 4 tonne truck. After, I came to my new residence – ate some beef stew and rice and now to bed.

Rockefeller is using the small-scale private sector to help with its seed. It’s sad but true. The individuals working in the public sector have little interest in success… and if small shop owners can get

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can get a profit by selling seeds along with information to farmers then it means that when a project finishes the shop owner still has an incentive to distribute seed… because they will still make money. Good outputs can therefore outlast the project – sustainability in action rather than just some word in a concept note.

Also, why shouldn’t people be able to make money if they help farmers – it’s a good thing. It has been a hard lesson for a lefty liberal like myself to accept that private sector can be a good thing.

By some chance I am now entering an after work drinking relationship with a guy who runs one of these projects. We are discussing whether there could be a job in it for me.

My trip to Chile
I’ve just got back from Chile. It was good to escape Nairobi for a while. I needed a break – although this was work. But you know what they say – a change is as good as a holiday. I cannot describe to you how nice it felt to spend Saturday and Sunday wondering around the city (Santiago) with a map in my hand and looking like a clueless tourist. Not really something that is possible in Nairobi. Was also great to meet the backpackers in the hostel. Starting out on a 6 month tour of the continent. Excited. Having left their work and responsibilities behind.

On my other day off I went up to the mountains near Santiago. So nice to play in snow and enjoy the view.

Was fun rediscovering my Spanish too.

Work was interesting although the jetlag, combined with a growing cold, really killed me and in the afternoons I was a bit of a mess. I was in Chile to meet with the people who run a project similar to mine for Latin America and the Caribbean. Sharing experiences and ideas. I learned some new things and had some new thoughts. Also understood better some of the drive from my Rome bosses who had initiated my Africa project to replicate the success of the Latin American one. I now have some serious thinking to do about how much of the experience of South America is relevant to Africa.

Back in Nairobi
When I walked back into the flat in Nairobi yesterday my flatmate, Lara, asked if that was it and I was returning to Europe now. I have been a bit grumpy recently and she thought that when I saw some other place I would wash my hands of Africa – up and leave. I haven’t. Not yet.

Why have I been grumpy? I think, as I said, needing a break. I’ve had one long weekend and two other days off plus Christmas, boxing day and new year since before I arrived in early December. And the strain of being here does begin to pull. I was becoming much less tolerant of all things disorganised over here.

Also, even my weekends now aren’t much of a break. I’m looking for jobs. Searching the internet. My contract finishes at the end of July and I don’t yet have anything to go to. I have French lessons three evenings a week and the other two it is really difficult to motivate myself to stay at work late to look for jobs… also, it’s not safe to stay alone there much after dark.

Right, I’m off to bed now to nurse my cold. Hot Toddy, cough medicine and paracetamol are all my new friends.

Sunday 22nd April.

Been a while since I blogged. Done lots of stuff since then.

Highlights

1. Visit to Nakuru National Park
2. Conference in Mozambique
3. Camping with Samburu tribes people over Easter
4. Rant about how European attitude to GM is damaging Africa

1. Nakuru National Park
Yup, so back in March I went to Nakuru national park – about 2-3 hours north of Nairobi. Some buddies (including my friend Borris from FAO-Rome… used to do the lake swim with me) and I hired a vehicle and drove along the rift valley up to the park one Friday afternoon. As we checked at the park gate, I met Sandra a teacher at the German school I’d had coffee with several weeks ago (a friend of another Rome buddy from the lake, Sebastian). So we decided to check into the same youth hostel/banda/ hut things and hang out together. This should be surprising, but… well the Nairobi crowd really is small – and there’s a good chance to bump into people all over the place.

Got up early to be greeted by a beautiful sunrise behind our hut with a heard of Buffalo. Beautiful.

The centre-piece of the park is Lake Nakuru, surrounded by some gentle hills and the special thing about the lake is that it is packed with Pink Flamingos - squillions of them. We went down to the lake side and the mass of pink birds was mind-boggling… Borris commented that the sound of all their feet walking around the lake, in and out of the water, was like a waterfall.. and yes. He was right.

Also met about 15 Rhinos (both white and black). The white ones are bigger and lighter in colour but actually get their name from the fact that they have a WIDE mouth.. and then the word was mistranslated somewhere to become white. Anyhoo, the wide mouthed white rhinos are grazers, eating vegetation off the ground (grass) – they are also social creatures that hang out together a lot. The black rhinos, which are smaller and more solitary, have a pointy mouth to help them browse for food from the trees.

The usual lions and monkeys were also seen, but the coolest thing was my first leopard – a baby, curled up on a tree. Auaaaahhhh.

The Saturday night, Borris and I wanted to take a slash around 2am… and opening the hut door to cross the site to the toilets/bushes, we were greeted by three great big Buffalos, the closest within 5m of us. I think I mentioned before that Buffalos are the 2nd most dangerous animal in Africa… killing and maiming many each year. Yieks!

Sunday morning we breakfasted outside with Zebras (including a baby) munching grass within a few metres of us.

I feel so spoiled here.

2. Conference in Mozambique
Yes, at the end of March, I went to Maputo for an incredible week. The conference brought together all the people funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in Africa. Over 400 of the best crop scientists, breeders and seed distributors on the continent, all doing amazing work. I am not funded by Rockefeller (an American charity run by an oil rich family) but when I heard about the meeting I demanded an invite. It was inspiring to meet these guys who have been nurtured by the Foundation over the years and trained to be top-class people and are really working, using plant science to improve crops… make them disease resistant, drought resistant, high in vitamins, low in toxins, insect resistant, striga resistant. Then at the same conference were breeders who could transfer the improved traits into locally adapted varieties. This is normally the furthest a scientist would think about a problem.. but having worked with the UN in Africa I now realise that its only the start of the problem. We have a lot of good crop varieties which aren’t being used by farmers… either because farmers don’t know about it… or because they know about it but can’t access the seed. There have been enormous problems making enough good seed for farmers to plant… and then getting the seed to the farmers.

You see almost 80% of Africans are small holder famers with about a hectare of land each. There are therefore, almost by definition the rural poor of Africa and any pro-poor policy or new variety should really target these people. They tend to live a long way from cities along very very bad roads. It used to be the job of governments to get seed/education to farmers, but the economic policies of the west, which led to reduction/removal of agricultural subsidies mean there isn’t enough money to do this effectively. It is in the domain of the private sector… but if there are no (good) roads to reach the small holder farmers, it is difficult to transport the seed. Even if there was a means to transport the seed, it becomes difficult to sell to the farmers who may not understand why its better, may be nervous about taking a risk on something new and don’t have access to any credit and rarely have spare cash. The same is true for fertilisers.

The issues of Seed Production and Distribution is big. Possibly almost as big as the issue of how the farmer will get their produce back to the market to sell once she/he’s grown it.

And the Rockefeller initiatives have made enourmous progress in this area reaching millions of small holder farmers. Some people would claim the issue shouldn’t be that big. If Coca-cola can get its product (which helps nobody) to the back of beyond and generate demand (which it can) then there is no excuse for the seed industry.

Rockefeller is using the small-scale private sector to help with its seed. It’s sad but true. The individuals working in the public sector have little interest in success… and if small shop owners can get

Sunday 25th February 2007

Things are well.

Yesterday, fed up with the city a matatu’d out to Lake Naivasha again and took a boat onto Crescent Island. The island (a crescent shape) was a former volcano crater rim and commands a view of another volcano Mount Longonot (blog…), the cliff of Hell’s Gate (blog… ) is full of lots of beautiful animals. During the boat trip I saw my first hippo (with Longonot behind).

I just walked around the island for a few hours, in amongst the Gnu (Wildebeast)... you remember that song Mr Fee used to sing
"I'm a GeNu, How do you do?"

Dave is in Africa, Honestly

Thompsons’ Gazelles, Grants Gazelles, Imapala, Water buck

and the ubiquitous Zebras. But I had been warned to keep away from the thick trees and bushes because that’s where the Buffalo were hiding… Yes, Buffalo, together with Hippos are by far the most dangerous animals in Africa – killing and maiming many more people than lions or leopards… because their grumpy!

On arrival back in Nairobi, I met Ben (Kenyan guy from work). We headed out to Eastlands for a drink in a properly African pub, with African music, dancing and no Musungos (whites).. it was great. Then onto his cousin’s mourning house in South B to hang out for a while. Similar in many ways to the mourning house Kai and I visited in Sri Lanka … people hanging about outside the house under a covering sitting chatting, laughing, most not seeming to be particularly interested in the fact that Ben’s cousin’s wife had just died. The difference was that in Kenya they were playing a Shine Jesus Shine dvd at full volume on the TV and I was very careful not to pay any attention to drunken uncles who might ask me to sing a song. There was no repeat performance of Brown Eyed Girl from Dave.

After the death house, I attended the ex-pat party of the week… hosted by The Italians.

Oh, and here's a pic of Paul flipping pancakes at my place last Tuesday

And here is my office

Some of my Colleagues in the office and my office through the back

My at my desk

Had a pancake party last night. Was great fun! Yummy.

Today I got chatting to a lady mycologist at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. She and her colleagues in the Plant Pathology division are the main centre in Kenya to help farmers who have a problem with diseased crops. Farmers send in cuttings or samples of afflicted plants and the labs try to diagnose what is causing the disease and then advise or help with its control. They have people specialised in bacterial diseases, fungal disease, nematodes and viruses. This is vitally important to the livelihoods of Kenyan farmers and food security for the nation, since only by knowing what is wrong with your crop can you act properly to cure it. Diseases left unchecked can spread across a whole farm, province, country or even continent. Control may involve the use of chemical sprays to kill the causative agent or changing the way the crop is grown to avoid it being grown at a time of year when the pathogen is at its nastiest. It may also involve changing the crop… some pathogens are very selective to one species of plant, so if a field is contaminated with a disease that kills maize, then growing cowpea may be an option. Or it may involve planting varieties that are resistant to that particular strain of pathogen.

Obviously fast diagnosis and detailed knowledge of the disease causing agent can have a big impact… however, sometime in the last 10 years the Kenyan Government, in its wisdom decided that agricultural support and extension work should be self funding. I have a feeling that this is due to international reforms forced by the rich countries of the world (through institutions like the IMF, World Bank, WTO) on the poor countries to remove agricultural subsidies. The government cannot subsidise seed supply, fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides… the argument being that if people pay the full value of something they will use it more wisely and it will encourage entrepreneurs and the private sector to help out in a more efficient way than a 3rd world government ever could manage… if farmers pay the full value of seeds then it will support the breeding for and development of new locally produced varieties that are particularly adapted to the national setting. Somehow, these rules on not subsidising farming enforced upon the developing world do not apply to USA or the EU. We pay a British farmer 70 pence to make a bag of sugar that will sell on the market for about 40 pence. I don’t want to get too much into the unfairness of this situation as we’ve all heard from Make Poverty History and other campaigns the effect that our farming subsidies have on the ability of an African farmer to get a fair prices for his crop… if she/he makes sugar at 50 pence a bag then there won’t be a market for it!

What I’m ranting about today is the absolute madness of the withdrawal of government subsidies from a plant pathology unit. Here we have a few well trained scientists and agronomists (some with PhD’s from UK/Australia) who know how to use the relatively cheap and efficient biotechnological techniques of PCR or ELISA (which uses antibodies) for diagnosis of disease in a very quick and specific manner. They have an ELISA machine in their lab and some access to other equipment and yet they are rarely used because the Plant Pathology Unit must be self financing. They must take in as much cash from farmers as they spend… and when local farmers struggle to pay the 500 Kenyan Schillings per sample (about £3) the advanced techniques can’t cover their costs. Instead they resort to old school taxonomic analysis of looking at the fluffy shapes that the fungal cultures make.

It seems to me incredibly short sited of the powers that make the rules. I am not an economist and I don’t know how to do proper cost/benefit analysis, but I imagine that the benefit of knowing early about threatening diseases is worth more to the country than just to the farmer with the diseased plant… and could certainly be worth more than £3… if it stops the disease spreading to his neighbouring farms and destroying livelihoods of farmers who will then be unable to pay for their kids to go to school and may also rely on food aid handouts from the government. So expecting the farmer to pay the full cost of stopping an crop infection does not seem reasonable.

I would really like to know if this is driven by the agenda of the Kenyan government or the rich donor countries of the world.