Communities around the Bura Irrigation Scheme, in Bura constituency, Tana River County are set to benefit from employment opportunities, infrastructure development of health and education facilitates among others following a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) with investors and the government for large scale commercial farming of rice and sugarcane.
The partnership follows the official launch of a 26-kilometer Bura Gravity Canal that replaced an expensive diesel pump-fed system, with a gravity-fed water supply from Kora Kora by President Wiliam Ruto earlier this year, and subsequent signing of lease agreements by investors and the government for 100,000 acres.
Among the investors who got the lease is Sukari Industries Limited, who have already started bush clearing and set up seed cane nurseries for commercial sugar cane production within more than 40,000 acres of land allocated in the Irrigation Scheme.
Speaking during a community engagement forum in Chewele village, George Mururi, the Head of External Affairs and Communication for Sukari Industries, said that the company was aiming to support the government efforts in job creation and food production at the same time.
Mururi said the investor was keen to work closely with the local citizens for the success of the investments, adding that hundreds of local citizens will be employed in the farm and the sugarcane crushing factory to be set up, thus improving the livelihoods and the local economy of the area.
“Our objective is to support, complement and supplement governmental efforts in relation to creation of employment, the expansion of business opportunities, the engagement of the unemployed youth and so on. We believe firmly that for us to register any form of success, we need to work and walk with the community and that is what brought us here, first to unveil the project and to have a conversation with the people of Chewele,” Mururi said.
“We have been allocated slightly over 40,000 acres, at the moment we have started bush clearing and cleared around 700 acres for seed cane development, which will later be transplanted into the other acres. We shall also be considering putting up a crushing facility because we are unable to evacuate those raw materials to any of our factories elsewhere,” he added.
According to the investor, with the continued support from the local communities and leaders, the setup of the whole farming and crushing facility will be complete within the next 18 months with an expected output of at least 5,000 tonnes of sugarcane per phase.
Ramadhani Babisana, the king of the Wailwana community in the area, urged the residents to support the investors and allow them to operate smoothly for the benefit of the community.
Babisani urged that while the land belonged to the community, the community lacked the capacity for large-scale commercial farming; thus, there was a need to have companies who could invest in the area and, in turn, offer the community employment opportunities and development projects.
At the same time, he called on other communities surrounding the area to offer the same support to all investors and avoid politicising the projects.
“We have had a very fruitful engagement with the investor on various issues, and as a community, we receive this company so that we can start working together. They have promised that there will be enough employment opportunities for our community, together with other infrastructural development,” Babisani said.
“I also urge the other communities who are our neighbours to support these investments. When the President came to launch the gravity canal project, he said that this project would be the food basket for the country, and now it is becoming evident,” he added.
By Erick Kyalo
