The aggregation power of cooperative societies in bringing together farmers and other production sectors of the economy is poised to play a critical role in the government’s agenda to economically uplift Kenyans at the bottom of the pyramid.
State Department for Cooperatives Principal Secretary (PS) Patrick Kiburi Kilemi said that the structure of our economy is that around 22 million people are economically productive but the people who have a regular income are less than four million, leaving around 18 million people who are hustling every day in the villages and in the MSMEs sector.
“The people at the village have the land as a factor of production but they don’t have capital. The structure of our economy is that our people own one to two acres doing agriculture. It is for this reason that the President formed the Ministry of Cooperatives so that we can rearrange the structure of the economy and put in structures to assist our people,” said the PS.
Kilemi said that the cooperative movement being a Sh1.5 trillion sector is very impactful in the country and challenged the sector players to come out and market the many projects that they have undertaken to transform this country.
Speaking on Monday during the launch of activities for the 2023 Ushirika Day, the PS said that most Kenyans are smallholder producers and the only way to assist them is through aggregation through the cooperatives.
“We have a perfect example of Githunguri where each family owns a cow and every 5th of the month, they are able to get a regular income from their dairy cooperative. To produce a litre of milk is around Sh30 to Sh35 and Giththunguri is paying between Sh50 and Sh55 per litre and the farmers are getting a profit of Sh20 per litre,” explained Kilemi.
According to the PS, the government has nine priority value chains with the cooperatives department having 17 priority value chains and they have noticed that if people were organized and assisted in production via cooperatives, they could produce more and this would address food security in the country.
“As a State Department we are focused on aggregation in sectors such as fishing, mining, cotton among others,” said the PS.
He highlighted that they were laying a special emphasis on the maize value chain since it was among the biggest in the country but has very few farmers’ cooperatives.
“We have like six maize cooperatives in the North Rift but these are not enough since the sector is so big. We want to aggregate famers into big cooperatives so that they are able to negotiate for good prices for their products, get affordable farm inputs and this will enable the country to meet the maize shortfall,” said Kilemi.
“In Kwale, the Base Titanium are assisting the residents through an initiative they call PAVI which is pamba na viazi since the county has a huge potential to produce these two crops in large quantities,” said Kilemi.
He explained PAVI through the local cooperative is able to produce cotton in Kwale, process it in Makueni and sell it in Thika and they are able to get around Sh87 per kilogramme.
“Today, we are importing cotton seed cake from Uganda. If we can empower our farmers and their cooperatives through aggregation, our cotton farmers will be producing enough seed cake which will go a long way in reducing the cost of animal feed in the country since seed cake is an ingredient in making the animal feeds,” said the PS.
Cooperative Alliance of Kenya (CAK) CEO Daniel Marube said that this year’s Madaraka Day (to be held in Embu County) has its theme centered around Cooperatives, MSMEs, Trade and Revenue and as the cooperative movement, they will hold a one-week exhibition preceding the celebrations from May 26th to 1st June at Embu University grounds.
“The government has given a lot of prominence to cooperatives and we are excited that we have been given an opportunity to collaborate with the government for faster development,” said Marube.
He added that recently, they launched the Stima Sacco housing project in Parklands which has a total of over 500 houses which is targeted at assisting the government in its affordable housing agenda.
CAK Chairman Macloud Malonza said that as part of this year’s Ushirika Day celebrations, they would be having a blood donation drive at the National Archive from 21st to 23rd June in efforts to help the health sector to get enough blood.
“Last year, we managed to get a total of 700 pints of blood and this year we are targeting around 2,000 pints,” he said.
Malonza added that they would be having a tree planting exercise during their Environmental Day to be held at the ASK Jamuhuri grounds, Ushirika corner on 24th June 2023.
This year’s Uhurika Day will be held at the KICC on July 1, 2023 with President William Ruto expected to be the chief guest.
By Joseph Ng’ang’a
