Community Enterprises as a Basis for Telecentre Establishment

Today I will leave Nairobi to visit one of Kenya's driest districts-Kibwezi District. The challenge in this District is not that there is no water that can be tapped to irrigate the perennially dry district but that rains come, create floods which then joins others collected upstream to just pass by and end in the Indian Ocean, where it helps no-one. It pains to note that a community with so much land can become perennial beneficiaries of food aid.

As is the spirit in our work at WillPower, we never challenge policy and policy institutions without geting involved to present a solution. We always seek to do what we can by calling like minded institutions to join us in demonstrating that people can best be supported or given aid by supporting what they can do for themselves. It is for this reason that we have taken the challenge jointly with the University of Nairobi (UoN), Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) and a Private Company Cardno Agrisystems East Africa to promote Agroforestry as the basis of rural development and wealth creation for the people of Kibwezi:

In this case, the question we ask ourselves is: can we, from our social research make the communities tap the water both from the seasonal rains and the big Athi River that passes in the neighborhood of Kibwezi?

I have in the past visited the area and jointly with the UoN’s Department of Land Resources Management and Agricultural Technologies identified a species of hardwood tree Melia volkensii as a potential ASAL tree that the people in Kibwezi would like to grow and green the environment. We developed a proposal which won a research grant from the Kenya Agricultural Productivity Programme (KAPP). The Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) joined the consortium with Cardno Agrisystems EA coming in to undertake policy research.

WillPower is undertaking the social development side while, UoN has undertaken to come up with a tissue culture variety of Melia volkensi . KEFRI will provide the necessary learning in tree technologies and support the development of tree nurseries jointly with the community interventions of WillPower.

We anticipated the problem of selling the institutional concept to doing what communities do. For the science behind the trees is very easy to articulate, but not the enterprise perspective because each smallholder farmer does their thing on their own. Creating an enterprise perspective around trees was not going to make things any easier even though there was an object behind which to discuss. It is in a nutshell not easy to articulate to the community why a people who have each lived in their farm and done what they do, or don’t do, be made by an outsider to come together for the sake of tree planting, when they know they can each get seedlings from the UoN Farm or from KEFRI!

Faced with such reality, the spin on what role technology can play in delivering learning and developmental benefits to the community becomes a suitable gospel. In my earlier discussions with the community leaders, I made them know that I will be keen in helping them create the shade that was known in the area only very long ago when trees were scattered everywhere. We agreed that my effort will deliver to them a forest that can generate wealth and help retain water for inter-cropping with other food crops and horticulture. We had our own arguments that the perspective has been tried by many Non Governmental Organizations but the poverty has persisted.

So what do we do to show and indeed make a difference?

My argument in every locality where we have had to work has been that communities are always left out of the planning of what is expected to eventually benefit them. The design of a telecentre for instance needs to be evolved jointly with the community, but they will need to see how it benefits them first and be used in the marketing of their produce, which many agree is their biggest challenge. Their agricultural production, in any good harvest has only benefited third parties, so my articulation of what makes sense to them started sounding appealing. The community is in agreement with me, that they will not succeed in marketing anything unless they come together and create a community enterprise initiative, which will be mentored by the WillPower's incubation effort to link up with other actors outside their district and even within. At this point, my work with the community empowerment initiative Value Addition and Cottage Industry Development (VACID Africa), which I created to help communities to create wealth comes to partner with the communities. The community enterprise VACID Africa-Kibwezi Value Chain Cooperative has therefore been started as an offshoot of this research focus to help the community become drivers of what we seek to achieve.

My going to Kibwezi today is therefore intended to follow up on the creation of the community enterprise, the cooperative. At the moment we have only started forming the community enterprise with the support of the lead-agent in the tree planting effort who is acting as the chair to the cooperative. During the meeting, I will also present to the members, the by-laws that VACID Africa in Nairobi has evolved jointly with the Ministry responsible for Cooperative Development and Marketing.

In the economic appraisal for the cooperative, the need to come up with a localized telecentre for the learning of technologies by the community, and which will also act as the marketing hub for anything agricultural, has been brought in as a key activity. The key focus of this effort is to retain within the area, the local youth who stream to urban centers in search of learning facilities and employment. It is exciting when you visit an area whose concern is more the draught and fight against hunger and you pursue opportunity to talk digital evolution. I suppose this is what being a change agent is, and playing that role will be something that I shall never shy away from.

The integrated focus to addressing development from perspectives that are environmental, hydrological, agricultural, entrepreneurial and indeed digital is something I would like to share in my future blogs. I would like you to join me as we explore what this community becomes and what the efforts shall end up meaning to the consortium I am working with.

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