The Cooperative University of Kenya (CUK), in partnership with other stakeholders, has been working on a one-stop digital platform that will link dairy, maize, and Irish potato cooperative societies to markets and service providers.
The open-source and cost-friendly digital system is meant to store information on production, membership, financial strength, business processes, markets, and service providers, targeting 152 cooperatives on a pilot basis in four counties: Narok, Nakuru, Baringo, and Nyandarua.
Prof. Wycliffe Oboka, a Senior Lecturer at the Cooperative University of Kenya (CUK) and one of the implementers of the Kenya Rural Transformational Centres Digital Platform (KRTCDF) project, said they want to bring farmers and various actors along the value chain onto one digital platform.
“There are many cases, where farmers produce and are unable to reach the markets. There are also cases whereby cooperatives are not doing as well as we have expected,” he noted.
Speaking during a week-long county-based platform prototype testing workshop in the targeted counties, Prof. Oboka said that lack of information, knowledge, and data about the market where farmers are able to sell their produce has always been a challenge.
He added that in a situation where the farmers are also not aware of the suppliers, extension service providers, equipment, and financial institutions that can support their production, has seen them struggle.
“Through this digital platform, they will be able to know who is in their space and whom they can quickly reach and access information,” Prof. Oboka noted.
He gave an example of a person who notices a symptom in an animal, or even in a crop, who will now be able to take a picture of the same, put it onto this digital platform to get information, and also be attended to by the extension service provider, who will be on the platform.
The system will also share details of all service providers, veterinary, equipment, extension officers, financial institutions, agro-vet dealers, and trade associations, so that the farmers are well aware of them and their locations in that space from whom they can seek quick information,” he said.
Any willing person does not need to walk to a cooperative to register; rather, they can comfortably register using their technology gadgets. Thus, this approach favours young people, who for long have declined to join cooperative societies, he added.
Prof. Oboka explained that another unique value of the system is that it will help in tracking food produced already in the market; hence, it will help in reducing post-harvest losses.
The system will also embrace traders, giving them the opportunity to track surplus food production in the market and know prevailing prices, thus easing the burden of farmers and cooperatives holding onto the produce, which can increase post-harvest losses.
“We are hopeful that once the system is in place and operational, it will help in taming the post-harvest losses by about 30 per cent,” said Prof. Oboka.
The Director of Research and Innovation at CUK, Prof. Ken Waweru, said the project has attracted potential financial providers interested in bankrolling the project, once it is extended to other countries after the pilot in March 2025.
“Ensuring farmers, markets, and service providers are linked into a single digital platform will not only minimise farmers exposure to exploitation by middlemen among other secondary players, but it will also enable stakeholders to pursue a common approach in terms of confronting challenges facing the identified sub-sectors,” Prof. Waweru said.
The Baringo County Executive for Agriculture, Livestock, and Blue Economy, Rispah Chepkonga, said they were really excited and ready to test the prototype on a digital platform, covering three value chains of maize, potatoes, and dairy, which are key value chains handled in the area.
“Baringo does seed maize for the Perkerra irrigation scheme; it also grows a lot of potatoes in the highland areas and produces a lot of milk. Interacting with the cooperative university and having this digital platform will help in coming up with nice tools in terms of looking at our progress in production levels, financing, insurance, and also monitoring the crops when in the field,” she explained.
The digital platform, Chepkonga said, will also be easy for them as a county in terms of planning and allocating resources and looking at the extension officers per the number of farmers engaging in the value chains.
“We have cooperative officers and also enough extension officers. Last year, the county employed 148 extension officers, and with their smartphones, they will be able to train the farmers on a one-to-one basis, when visiting farmers, while the societies will train the farmers in groups,” she said.
On her part, Nyandarua County Executive for Tourism, Trade, and Industrialisation, Cooperative Development Agnes Junji, said that as a county that grows a lot of potatoes and has the challenge of marketing, the platform will assist in reaching out to farmers in other regions to reach buyers and other farmers from other regions such as Kisumu and Mombasa who do not produce the product.
“This App will make a huge difference to farmers farming through cooperatives. One cannot sell to their fellow farmers, and so this platform will create market linkages and open up markets for the farmers to get markets from other areas,” she said.
Njuji explained that strengthening the over 50 cooperatives in the area through the aspects of aggregation and marketing through the digital platforms, will not only make them stronger but also revive the cooperatives that had become dormant.
Cooperatives mapped for the pilot basis expressed confidence and opportunities to enhance productivity and reduce challenges along the value chains.
Helen Siminta Surum, Narok North Sub-County Cooperative Officer, said that they will be able to monitor the performance of cooperative societies, and farmers will be able to market their products and access agricultural services, including extension services.
“The new technology platform will help in reducing the cost of doing business among the more than 100 cooperative societies, thus motivating farmers to double their efforts to produce more. The technology will contribute to farmers benefiting from more information on agriculture production,” said Surum.
Sylvester Odera, Lead Developer for the Rural Transformation Centres Digital Platform Project (RTCDPP), said that unlike other platforms that are out there, this one empowers farmers through their cooperatives, giving them more bargaining power.
He pointed out that the other unique feature of this platform is that, unlike others, which have stand-alone modules for each value chain, this one incorporates all the modules that are important to the farmer into one single platform.
“You will find a very advanced ticketing system that helps farmers solve their issues. At the same time, it also helps the farmers with their bookkeeping and journal entry, thus solving the problem of fragmented technologies,” he said.
Odera termed the platform as one big ecosystem that empowers farmers through their cooperatives, and it is therefore a must for any farmer who wants to use it to have a smart control resource system, which currently has three main access channels, namely Laptop, Mobile App and USSD.
By Wangari Ndirangu
