The National Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (NAVCDP) in collaboration with the County Government of Uasin Gishu has intensified efforts to mobilize farmers across the county to join SACCOs and other Cooperatives.
The initiative is meant to help farmers access credit and other financing opportunities through SACCOs while delivering produce to the cooperatives.
Speaking during an engagement forum with farmers from across various saccos and cooperatives in order to strategize on how to recruit more members to entities, the County Project Coordinator NAVCDP, Uasin Gishu, Cosmas Langat emphasized that the strength of saccos and cooperatives was numbers, noting that having more farmers in these entities, will attract more support in terms of funding both from government and other organizations.
“NAVCDP is a Government of Kenya project that aims at providing a market for agricultural produce and supporting value addition. To achieve that, we are mobilizing farmers in counties, Uasin Gishu included, to join SACCOs and other cooperatives. This will help farmers to access credit or finance,” he said.
He described the initiative as a tripartite agreement which links Common Interest Groups (CIGs), Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs/Cooperatives), and SACCOs. Farmers supply produce through their cooperative, the cooperative handles bulk sales and processes payments, and the SACCO leverages this off-taker agreement to provide production loans and financial services.
The NAVCDP County Coordinator mentioned that they support Saccos and cooperatives through different grants.
For SACCOs, they get inclusion grants that are meant to support office setup, including digitization of services by procuring equipment like computers, tables, and others.
Then once established, they are also given mobilization funds, in order to recruit more members. After recruitment, if farmers are able to save some money, they are given another second form of grant called marching grant, which is shilling to shilling.
For instance, if farmers are able to save Sh3 million, they are supported with the same amount from NAVCDP, thus empowering the saccos to have sufficient funds to operate and give loans to members.
“The importance of us having this agreement is that we want farmers to be such that, as they save and get loans, they will be able to deliver produce to the cooperatives. They increase their productivity,” noted the NAVCDP Coordinator.
As a way to mitigate loan risks, the farmers have been organized into groups called Common Interest Groups (CIGs) and Vulnerable and Marginalized Groups (VMGs). These members in a group can be self-guarantees so that when they borrow money from a Sacco, in case one member defaults, they can be able to support one another.
“And these are people who are doing common business. If they are dairy farmers, they are all daily farmers. They are basically facing the same challenges, and they can be able to meet up in a group, learn how to address those challenges, and be able to invest together, or even individually, to promote or increase productivity,” alluded Langat.
Farmers highlighted several challenges contributing to farmers being discouraged to join saccos, like inadequate information, lack of funds for mobilization, mistrust in some SACCOs leadership among others.
They advocated for mass sensitization at the grassroot level using existing government administrative structures like Chiefs so that people are aware of the benefits of joining SACCOs.
By Ekuwam Sylvester
