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Kenya

Case Study: Building resilience of women in an arid area through adaptable technology

Attachments

Project Alimao agri-nutrition project

Sector Water, Resilience, and Livelihoods

Timeframe 2015-2020

Beneficiaries 800 people

Location Wajir County

Donor USAID

Goal Building resilience of communities in the arid areas of Kenya

Context

Kenya Resilient Arid Lands Partnership for Integrated Development ( Kenya RAPID) programme is a five year program being implemented in five Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) counties of Kenya namely: Garissa, Wajir, Marsabit, Isiolo and Turkana) to build resilience for the communities.

It strongly supports the Ending Drought Emergencies Common Program Framework launched by the Government of Kenya in November 2015, recognizing that “Sustainable management of rangelands, water, crops, and increasing the contribution of livestock to the pastoral economy are critical to resilient livelihoods in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs).” The objective of this case study is to bring out the benefits of adaptable technology in the ASAL that can gradually transform pastoralists into agro-pastoralists and build resilience within a community.

Background and Challenge

The main economic activity for the community living in the Wajir region is livestock keeping.
The region receives less than 200mm of rainfall in a year and though people are willing to do farming, they encounter challenges due to lack of water. However, as the saying goes,” Necessity is the mother of invention” the struggles of women in the middle of the desert after losing their livestock to drought, opened another window of exploration beyond livestock keeping.

The Ali Mao women group was formed as a support group with an aim of improving their member’s living standards despite living in a drought stressed environment. The group consists of 40 women with different social status including single household and divorced mothers abandoned by pastoral husbands. The women decided on vegetable production for both domestic consumption and as a source of income for their families. The main vegetable crops produced are kales, capsicum, cowpeas, tomatoes and spinach.

The group identified a piece of land in 2007 and contributed the little they had to dig a shallow well to irrigate their vegetable crops. Luckily, despite the drought, the water table in Wajir Township is high, giving the group promising results. A shallow well was dug at 12 meters and has a yield of 1m3/hr. The success of the well-motivated the women to start vegetable farming.

Due to excessive heat, the women adopted use of old mosquito nets and clothing’s to protect the plants from the excessive heat and for pest control. The drawing of water from the well using a bucket for plant irrigation was a major challenge as it limited the square area the group could reach without over exertion. Additionally, they could not all draw water from the well at the same time and so they had to work on a watering shift, where the last farmer left the farm after 8pm.

The plight of the women captured the attention of the county government of Wajir who supported the group with a petrol generator and a water storage tank of 5000litres. This reduced the burden of drawing water using bucket from the well, but increased the cost of production since each member had to contribute Ksh 500 ($5) per day for purchase of fuel. Those who could not afford continued manually fetching water. Production was also affected by pests that damaged the leaves of the plants leading to reduced production. This low production and expensive cost of fuel had discouraged the women group from pushing forward.

The Kenya RAPID program in the county and through the county department of agriculture, brought new hope to the Ali Mao Women’s group. The use of solar powered pump technology has improved the farming methodology and increased benefits to the families of the Ali Mao Women’s group.