A water storage tank for irrigation owned by Nadupoi Olooloitikoshi Women’s Group (COURTESY)

Kenya is a water-insecure country partly because a large swathe of the country’s land is arid and semi-arid, receiving less than 300 mm of rainfall annually and fit only for livestock farming. This has made the country’s drive for food self-sufficiency a herculean task, and the country has to continue to rely on imports to feed its nearly 50 million citizens.

Moreover, rising frequency of and prolonged droughts due to climate change have caused farm yields to decline at an average rate of 21.41 percent every year, according to a World Bank report in 2016.

Making matters worse for the country’s food production drive is the low water coverage. According to the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation, Kenya’s water coverage nationally is still at 60 percent, affecting sanitation and irrigation.

Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives pins the hopes of the country’s future food production on scaling up irrigation, particularly the small-scale irrigation projects that target the more than 4.5 million smallholder farmers. The ministry defines smallholder farmers as those working on land between 0.5 and 5 hectares.

Need for irrigation

With the support of the African Development Bank, the government has initiated a number of irrigation projects through the Small-Scale Irrigation and Value Addition Project (SIVAP), worth $70.69 million, as a means to reduce dependence on rainfall for agricultural production.

The SIVAP is implemented in 11 arid and semi-arid counties of Kenya such as Bomet, Kitui, Makueni, Meru, Murang’a, Nyandarua and Tharaka Nithi, with two of its four major components being enhanced water infrastructure development and capacity development.

While the country’s irrigation potential is estimated at 546,340 hectares, only about 202,350 hectares have access to irrigation.

Gitonga Mugambi, Chief Executive Officer of the National Irrigation Authority, a state agency charged with the development, management and regulation of irrigation, said this is partly due to backward irrigation technology.

“With the right and affordable technology and improved water storage facilities, the current irrigation coverage could increase to about 1.9 million acres (769,930 hectares),” said Mugambi. To help get around the technology problem, the government has turned to Chinese technology investors.

Role of Chinese investors

Zhu Weicai, General Manager of the Sino-Kenya Agriculture Technology Co., said China is making all -out efforts to assist Kenyan farmers with affordable modern irrigation technologies. Zhu said the investors from China will help develop low-cost local agro-processing industry that will help farmers add value to their farm yields.

The Chinese investors have identified a number of local dealers to sell their irrigation kits. For example, Artest Zhang from Dayu Irrigation Group Co. Ltd., one of the world’s largest integrated suppliers of water-saving irrigation equipment based in China, said they have local dealers who stock irrigation kits from China that Kenyan farmers can buy.

Margaret Wambui from Fine Touch (Kenya) Ltd., one of the dealers of Chinese irrigation kits, said the company is fully stocked to meet a wide range of needs of Kenyan farmers, adding that Kenyan farmers prefer the kits imported from China as they have proven to be durable, and are affordable compared to the kits from Western Europe.

For example, it would cost a smallholder farmer with 1 acre (0.40 hectares) of land only about $1,058 to get a full kit (consisting of pipes and fittings) that could irrigate the entire plot. Depending on the kind of crop a farmer grows, the cost of the kit could be recovered within one planting season, Wambui said.

“Kenya does not have to invent the wheel. It can look to China to boost its agricultural production as well as enhance its food security,” said Zhu.

Jin Xinhai, Chief Executive Officer of Lanzhou Jintudi Plastic Co., said China wants to share technological know-how with Kenyan farmers.

Happy farmers

In the arid and semi-arid lands of Kajiado, Narok, Bomet, Tharaka Nithi and even Turkana, the lives of rural farmers are changing, thanks to the small-scale irrigation projects. It is even more spectacular given that these are normally areas inhabited by nomadic communities.

Already, a number of smallholder farmers are using Chinese irrigation technology.

For example, Irene Makui, Chairperson of the Nadupoi Olooloitikoshi Women’s Group located in Kitengela in Kajiado County, said their area gets scant rainfall. “But thanks to the Chinese, we are able to grow vegetables and other crops due to the group’s ability to irrigate.”

They started the group in 2015 with a total of 14 women who are all elderly. They began by buying goats and money for themselves. “We realized that as a livestock-keeping community, we needed to be unique. We sat down and agreed to start a farming project that will help us produce vegetables and balance our meat-based diet,” she said.

“We were given land by the community - here land is owned by the community. We went to Kajiado County offices to seek help on water. They listened to us and helped build a water tank and dug a borehole. We draw water and use it for irrigation and livestock. As you can see, the trenches for giving cows and goats water are here, too.”

Another group that is benefiting from the Chinese irrigation technology is the Lelaitich Cooperative Society in Chepalungu, Bomet County.

“I am very happy that I now know how to irrigate my farm. I have gained confidence since joining this project where I have been taught how to use irrigation equipment. This means that my days of looking up at the sky for rainfall are over. I now can expect harvest throughout the year whether it rains or not,” said Emily Koros, a smallholder farmer from Bomet.

Mercy Chesang, another smallholder farmer in Chepalungu, said her area hardly gets enough rainfall but the equipment she got from the irrigation project has made life easier.

“We use the kits to irrigate our vegetables. Besides, the community around here gets water for their livestock. Farming activities have increased and so are the incomes,” she said.

“Rainfall has become unpredictable, a fact that has made farming unattractive. However, with the affordable equipment we recently got, things are now changing and there is hope,” said Daniel Muchnku, a farmer from Tharaka Nithi.

Food security

Professor Hamadi Boga, Principal Secretary of the State Department for Agricultural Research in Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives, said the agricultural sector contributes about 24 percent of the GDP and another 27 percent indirectly through economic linkages; it accounts for 65 percent of the country’s export earnings. “But the sector was badly hit during COVID-19 outbreak which affected the speed with which farmers could access farm inputs, while the costs of doing farming business went up,” he said.

Boga noted that Kenya’s food production system is 80 percent reliant on smallholder farmers, and majority of them live in rural areas that have mostly arid and semi-arid land. With low farm yields, they don’t earn enough to afford new technologies.

According to Jackline Koin, head of agriculture authority of Kajiado County, erratic weather patterns pose a huge challenge to many farmers who live in arid and semi-arid areas.

She added that Kenya has always been food insecure, due to low farm yields, low seed quality and poor rainfall distribution.

“The timing of the entry of the Chinese into the country’s farming sector would not have been better,” added Koin.

Betty Maina, Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Industrialization, Trade and Enterprise Development, noted that the entry of the Chinese investors into the farming sector is crucial to transforming agriculture, which she termed as the bedrock of Kenya’s economy.

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