AGRA and Kenya Forge a New Path for Farmers as Partnership Sparks Hope Across the Countryside

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The morning sun cast a warm glow over the lush hills of Naivasha as leaders, farmers, and policymakers gathered for the 2025 Intergovernmental Forum for Agriculture. The air buzzed with anticipation—Kenya’s agricultural future was on the table, and a renewed partnership promised to ignite real change.

At the center of the dialogue stood AGRA President Alice Ruhweza, her voice calm but resolute as she addressed the room. “Kenya can turn small farms into thriving businesses if we fix soils, markets, and finance together,” she said, capturing the spirit of the moment. Her message resonated deeply with the farmers who had long awaited a model that recognized both their struggles and their potential.

For years, shrinking yields and unpredictable weather had challenged smallholders across the country. But now, a five-year, US$29 million AGRA investment—aligned with Kenya’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda—was beginning to shift the tide. County governments, private sector partners, farmer organizations, and national ministries were all pulling in one direction for the first time in years.

Among the quiet heroes of this effort were the 506 Village-Based Advisors—60% of them women—who carried notebooks, smartphones, and wisdom from one field to the next. They were familiar faces in local villages, offering guidance on soils, seeds, and markets. Mothers, youth leaders, and agripreneurs alike, they formed the human link between national policy and farm-level transformation.

Soil health emerged as a dominant theme at the forum. Once-fertile regions now suffered from acidity and nutrient depletion, problems often invisible to farmers until their crops began to fail. Yet hope was returning. AGRA’s support for Kenya during the 2024 Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit had sparked new national momentum, and counties were now working methodically to implement the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan.

Davis Muthini, AGRA’s Acting Country Director for Kenya, spoke passionately about the ecosystem approach. “By improving yields for smallholder farmers and helping them access structured markets, we can strengthen livelihoods and directly boost Kenya’s food security,” he said. His vision echoed through the hall, where county leaders—including Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdullahi—called for sustained investment in water and county-level resources.

Post-harvest loss, another quiet thief in Kenya’s food system, was finally being tackled head-on. With US$7 million in Green Climate Fund support, dryers, shellers, hermetic storage bags, and warehouse receipt systems were beginning to reach villages that had never seen such technologies. In Makueni County, families who once watched a third of their harvest spoil were now organizing sales, planning school fees, and setting aside capital for the next planting season.

Finance, long the missing link, was also receiving overdue attention. With agriculture receiving only about 5% of formal lending, AGRA’s partnerships with the National Treasury and IFAD were pushing banks to design farmer-friendly products—tools that matched the realities of rain cycles, market fluctuations, and small-scale operations.

As the forum drew to a close, the mood was different from previous years. This time, there was clarity. There was alignment. And there was action.

Looking ahead, AGRA and the Kenyan government laid out ambitious targets: helping 2.5 million farmers adopt climate-smart practices, reaching 2 million with resilient post-harvest solutions, strengthening structured markets for at least 100,000 farmers, and blending digital platforms with frontline extension systems to transform how advice reached the field.

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