Micro Enterprises Support Program Trust

Many actors within agricultural VCs do not have access to markets for their produce. We seek to ensure that the poor have access to the market through collective marketing and provision of integrated services. This will result to systemic improvement of social economic for many livelihoods. The process will also ensure that only competetive products access the market and thereby maximum benefits.

Kenya is largely an agricultural country with over 80% of its GDP derrived from agriculturer and therefore the targeted impact will be in excess of 1,000,000 dairy farmers mainly women and youth. the overall objective will be to ensure enhanced competitiveness of their productrs through provision of intergrated BDS services including facilitating access to finance. To realize business competitiveness for ALL, MESPT has adopted a systemic market development approach that inculcates involvement of all market players within the dairy value chain. A close collaboration between public and private sectors will be strengthened. More specifically, market-led interventions will mainstream participation of the private sector to accelerate market demand downstream the dairy value chain system. MESPT has closely been working with the private sector in Kenya, producer groups and the government (National and County) but they all require enhancement to achieve market objectives for all actors.

MESPT will develop partnerships on gender development strategies, and at the activity level during design and implementation. Thus, multisectoral approach with partners to ensure women’s needs, benefits and rights are considered to the development activities being planned and implemented, taking into account the social, economic and political contex.

Inclusivity in Dairy Value Chain Development activities implies intricate interrogation of gender issues and proactive integration of key gender components into value chain development strategies. There is perceived hierarchy in Kenya with respect to the dairy value chain activities often skewing ownership of assets (dairy animals) and economic returns to men. leading to exclusion of women, youth and persons with disabilities (PWDs) active and gainful employment. (b) Aligning Dairy Value Chain Development frameworks to Human Right Based Approaches (HRBA) principles approach viz; Participation, Accountability, Non-Discrimination, Equality, Empowerment and Legality. This implies facilitating gender mainstreaming by (i), business model paradigm shift with aspects of technology design, workload, distribution of financial gains. (ii) Linkages and Cooperation by fostering/sensitizing/capacity building on gender-equitable leadership and governance in the organization and management of associations. (ii) VC Financing through promoting gender-sensitive financial products and regulations and providing access to financial services to women youth and PWDs, and (iv) promoting affirmative action within the social enterprise framework. MESPT therefore, seeks to facilitate build on the social enterprise framework through the commercial villages approach in the target counties. In this approach, commercial villages/common interest groups (CIGs) consisting of 50-100 farmers will be created. 

On granting of the heifers will employ a merry go round commercial village-based approach. This is aimed at fostering the adoption and delivery of proximate, inclusive and accountable small holder-based system. In turn, this is expected to foster inclusion, increase dairy productivity and build resilience to women smallholder dairy farmers in Kenya. (c) Leveraging on structures already instituted by MESPT, formation of the common interest groups (CIGs) will not be a challenge. This intervention sees the gap as a resource that needs to be plugged into while at the same time, being cognisant of the social hierarchy that exists. This will be important in designing social strategies geared towards inclusion and economic development of women (and youth) in Dairy Value Chain and enterprise development. The expected outcome of this intervention is inclusion, profitability, resilience and sustainability of the farmers groups.

MESPT will develop partnerships on gender development strategies, and at the activity level during design and implementation. Thus, multisectoral approach with partners to ensure women’s needs, benefits and rights are considered to the development activities being planned and implemented, taking into account the social, economic and political context; and how equal benefits will increase the effectiveness of activities and the sustainability of outcomes. This will lead to local cultural, institutional and policy context in determining whether women will benefit, and whether benefits will be sustained will be considered. I

Producers (farmers): MESPT are at the forefront to ensure that the smallholder farmers are linked with viable markets for their produce and offered capacity building services to build their skills. The farmers must be in groups (Farmer Groups and Associations/ Community-Based Organizations (CBOs))

• Service providers: MESPT capacity builds agricultural experts to provide advice and technical assistance to farmers. They act as a bridge between farmers and SMEs by providing a demonstrable added value to the supply chain.
• Markets/SMEs (processors/ exporters): MESPT continuously sources for small scale processors and exporters who they link with farmers so that they can trade and also link them to financial institutions that can lend them working capital when in need. They also equip them with relevant skills through capacity building and further expose them to international markets through international trade fairs. Financial Intermediaries (Saccos, MFIs, FSAs): They closely work with Financial institutions which they give affordable wholesale loans for on-lending to SMEs and farmers within value chains. Apart from the financial resource, financial institutions working with MESPT also benefit from capacity building of its staff & board, Development and installation of MIS; Product development support etc.

MESPT interventions are market led and her market development approach is anchored on M4P (making markets work for the poor) and a theory of change that facilitates the adoption of resource and cost-efficient systems of production enabled by access to tailored credit facilities and non-financial services upstream and facilitates access to domestic, regional and export markets downstream. The increased market demand stimulates increase in primary and secondary production consequently creating employment and income opportunities for poor farmers, unemployed youth and women. With utilization of climate friendly technologies, resilience of poor farmers is enhanced. Infrastructure that is critical for competitiveness is also established through public private partnerships.

Small holder farmers in the African context work in a highly hostile environment that is not conducive to the upgrading of small and often informal producers. They possess few physical and natural resources such as access to land, water or irrigation systems and they often have very little technical skills and low managerial capacity. They also often have very little access to commercial markets and have difficulty in accessing inputs, finance and credit services. These constraints pose a huge challenge for them to ably participate in commercial value chains and when they do participate, high transaction costs are often involved due to the small and dispersed nature of their farming enterprises. Linking smallholder farmers to markets remains central to achieving higher productivity and income growth, which in turn leads to improved food security and reduced poverty levels among smallholder farmers. However, with the advent of economic liberalization and the associated market imperfections, many smallholder farmers in developing countries have been constrained from participating in markets.

MESPT’s strategic plan is anchored on three pillars namely Green Growth Development, Enterprise Development and Value Chain Development. Our interventions are aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Kenya’s Green Economy Strategy Implementation, the big 4 agenda, and Vision 2030. A key strategic objective of MESPT is building and strengthening strategic alliances and partnerships for enhanced and efficient delivery of services. Most specifically MESPT work is driven by the desire to create opportunities for income generation and jobs for the rural communities with a bias to youth and women. MESPT will be keen to provide lasting solutions to solve pressing challenges among the small holder farmers and other value chain actors targeted by this project as well as promoting practices that are climate friendly and by extension influence policy.

1000000 Youth and women organizations strengthened on entrepreneurship development. 400,000 young innovators sensitized and oriented towards entrepreneurship in Agri & Re enterprises. 400,000 Youth entrepreneurs trained in entrepreneurial & technical skills in Agri & RE value chains and engaged in entrepreneurial challenge/competitions. 2 Young business incubators strengthened with capacity to deliver services to young entrepreneurs and Agri & RE incubation toolkit developed. 200 youth entrepreneurs incubated and mentored. 200000 Youth led enterprises supported with seed capital to catalyse their growth. 24 functional virtual connector platform accessible across Africa and Europe developed. 200000 high potential youth entrepreneurs engaged and linked to European business for knowledge and technology transfer, mentorship via digital platform and linkages board.

This action seeks to contribute to strengthen youth as actors of governance and development, and foster youth inclusion and empowerment in Agri & RE Entrepreneurship through reinforcement of youth participation in entrepreneurship development. This will involve strengthening capacity of youth organizations to promote entrepreneurship, establishing youth entrepreneurship forums and platforms that would facilitate coordination of Youth Entrepreneurial /Challenge/ Competitions (YEC).  AYT will build on its existing systems and structures that are supporting decent work and labour rights program in East Africa to deliver on this objective. The AYT initiative empowers active youth organizations and labour market stakeholders towards supporting and promoting youth employment. It has reached over 100,000 youth in the EAC region. MESPT has held Green Challenge competition in the past aimed at creating green and sustainable jobs for youth and women will be part of this activity. This action also aims at strengthening 2 Young incubators. E4Impact Foundation will apply its global expertise in establishing and building capacity of incubators to support the identified incubators. This will involve developing an incubation training toolkit for Agri & RE sectors; creating linkages with board of European Business basing on its ongoing partnership with Confindustria, Italy’s Business Association

Lack of clear strategy to provide consistency in programming, inadequate management systems, policies and structures and inadequate fundraising skills undermines their organizational and institutional sustainability. Strengthening the capacity of at least 10 Youth serving organizations with a bias towards entrepreneurship development is a key objective in this action. However, the systems and structures developed as well as knowledge and skills gained in the process will be applicable to other initiatives in these organizations. A Youth position paper, on youth entrepreneurship development, based on knowledge and learnings gained in implementation of this action, will contribute to informing the policy makers on the desirable policy and legal support that would stimulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem. 2 Young business incubators / accelerators: These are incubators less than 3 years in operation. They are faced with various needs including technical knowhow in running incubators, lack ICT technologies/ viable digital platforms and limited linkages to markets, mentors, investors and effective networks. In addition, inadequate resources (funding, human resource and infrastructure) to respond to the entrepreneurs needs, limited sponsorship and production space, inability to utilise advanced technological facilities and poor policy and legal framework by most African governments to support incubation and accelerators constraint the efforts of business incubators.

Participation by the target groups and final beneficiaries. The partners have been consulting widely with the target groups such as youth serving organization and other stakeholders and this shall continue during the action to ensure inclusion and sustainability of the activities. Specifically, the Youth serving organizations shall be empowered to aid in mobilization and training through Training of Trainers (ToT), the Virtual platform will integrate feedback mechanism for the youth entrepreneurs as well as the mentors. The action will also have annual review / reflection forums for partners / wider stakeholder to capture any concerns and areas that may require attention Particular added-value elements: MESPT undertakes annual green growth and BDS conferences where high potential entrepreneurs graduating from the program will be exposed for continued linkages, mentorship and learning. MESPT revolving fund will be availed to support high potential youth entrepreneurs for financial linkages. E4Impact Foundation has also established collaborations with European enterprises and various chambers of commerce who are linked with young entrepreneurs in Africa for mentorship, access to markets, technology transfer and funding opportunities. These linkages will be utilized in this action. AHBFI has pioneered both physical and digital aggregator model innovation in 12 African countries, which bridges the gap between producers, the markets and input suppliers. These approaches and existing pool of mentors will be deployed for this action.

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we have offices in about 26 out of 47 counties in Kenya with highly trained proffesionals

SMEs and Large Companies in Agri & RE value chains: They require a structured platform and an incentive mechanism to enable them focus on youth mentorship, internship and support start-up / growth entrepreneurship programs and other incubation processes. The SMEs and Large Companies within the target value chains will be called upon at the design phase to deliberate on acceptable incentives and encouraged to take part in an integrated feedback mechanism through virtual platform and the annual review / reflection forums for partners / wider stakeholder to capture any concerns and areas that may require attention. Opportunities include the youth SMEs being part of their supply chains. Final Beneficiaries Government programme: The government managed incubation programmes require capacity enhancement, infrastructure development and financial resources. Majority have a poor growth rate and lack of entrepreneurial skills, limited access to venture capital for start-ups and growth and limited technical expertise in the target value chains, poor orientation to private sector and have obsolescence infrastructure. Similar challenges are faced by Private sector and NGOs managed incubators that need exposure to best practices. These programmes and institutions will benefit from learning forums, networks and virtual platforms facilitated through this action. Incubators employees and employees of youth companies: Based on experience from ongoing E4Impact foundation programmes, these employees are often lacking in entrepreneurial skills and technical knowhow, they have limited exposure to innovations, information and new networks.

For the last 15 years, MESPT has been supporting development of growth oriented agricultural value chains in Kenya through provision of integrated business solutions aimed at achieving value chain competitiveness within a market eco-system. With adoption of green growth as a core approach in MESPT’s programmes, an emphasis has been placed on building the resilience of actors across value chains. To bring systemic change, the interventions are based on a three-tier symbiotic system consisting of producers, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and financial intermediaries, all supported by a pool of service providers. The systemic market development interventions have resulted to market-led diversification and enterprise development that have broadened income opportunities and improve livelihoods for rural poor communities especially youth and women. Local people and organizations realize that the right capacity and support mechanisms must be available locally so that rural areas can become more competitively engaged with markets. Working in agricultural value chains has resulted to organized system linkages between groups of producers, traders, processors, and service providers (including nongovernment organizations) that join to improve productivity and the value added from their activities and more particularly mainstreaming of small holder farmers into the market system.