Browsing: Agribusiness

If any of us were given a warning by an alien, in a language we did not understand, with symbols we had never seen before, we would not emerge warned–which is a fact that is now driving legislative reform in Kenya to ensure warnings on pest control products are understandable to every farmer. The aim is to ensure farmers reap far higher yields without causing any damage to themselves or their land.

As it is, pest control products used in Kenya have been through around nine years of safety testing and more than 100 kinds of tests in order to gain approval for use in their countries of origin, such as the US, Australia and other national regimes that only approve pesticides when they are proven to be risk-free for the prescribed use.

Until they have achieved that, Kenya’s law prohibits their use in Kenya.

But even once they have …

KCB Bank Kenya has launched a Ksh300 million (US$2.9 million) poultry farmer empowerment project in Makueni County, in its latest move to support agribusiness in Kenya.

This will see over 1,000 poultry farmers in Kibwezi benefit from credit facilities, capital, vaccinated insured chicks, chicken feed and vaccines.

The project will be offered under KCB MobiGrow, a mobile-based platform which provides financial and non-financial services to smallholder farmers in Kenya and Rwanda.

Under the project dubbed, ‘From Chick to Market’, poultry farmers will access various tailor-made MobiGrow services.

Upon maturity, the chicken will be bought at a pre-contracted price by KCB market partners, guaranteeing farmers of a ready market.

Proceeds from the sales will then be remitted to farmers through their KCB MobiGrow accounts to ensure the recovery of loan amounts.

“We are committed to growing agribusiness in the country. We continue to accelerate access to financial services which is in …

Tanzania is one of the eight African countries which are to benefit from the African Development Bank`s (AFDB) new grant projects funded by the Agriculture Fast Track Fund (AFT) in support of agribusiness Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

According to a statement issued on 11^th March, 2019, the pan African bank is next week expected to launch 17 new grant projects which are to be implemented in eight African countries – Tanzania (4), Ghana (4), Burkina Faso (2), Malawi (2), Mozambique (2), Ethiopia (1), Nigeria (1) and Senegal (1).

The AFT fund is managed by the agriculture and agro-industry department of the African Development Bank. It supports the development of a strong pipeline of `bankable` agriculture infrastructure projects and assists African agribusiness SMEs in project preparation activities to ease their take-off. The fund is supported by the governments of the USA (through USAID), Denmark (through DANIDA) and Sweden …