Solar Irrigation in Kenya: The future of agriculture

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INTRODUCTION • According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation by 2020

agricultural productivity in parts of Sub-Sahara Africa will drop by 50%

• Kenya’s agriculture is 96% rain-fed and hence highly affected by changing climatic conditions.

• Only 12% of Kenya is considered to be high potential for farming or intensive livestock production. A further 5.5%, which is classified as of medium potential, mainly supports livestock especially sheep and goats. Only 60 % of this high and medium potential land is devoted to crops and the rest is used for grazing and forests. The other 82% of the total land in Kenya is classified as arid and semi-arid lands

The problem • Small scale farmers produce

75% of the food we consume but remain poor.

• Longer dry seasons

• Agricultural productivity is decreasing

• Food prices are going up

• Kenya is staring at a looming catastrophe in terms of food production and security in 2018

The problem

• Rainfall patterns are no longer regular or predictable

• When it rains, it pours

• Irrigation has long been seen as an option to improve and sustain rural livelihoods by increasing crop production.

• Large scale irrigation schemes have ran into operation and maintenance challenges

Solution

• Smallholder irrigation technologies

• Transformation in how agriculture has previously been done

• Farmers must be at the center of every effort to improve agriculture

• They must be involved in innovation and coming up with solutions that address their pressing challenges

Solar irrigation pumps

• More cropping seasons

• Planting high value crops

• Higher productivity

• Higher income for farmers

• No fuel costs unlike diesel pumps

• Minimal maintenance required

Are farmers willing to adopt SIPs?

• Kenya Agricultural Value Chain Enterprises (KAVES)

• There are more than 5 million small scale farmers in Kenya and about 20 million in East Africa.

• There is a market for at least 200,000 pumps in Kenya

Factors inhibiting greater adoption of SIPs

• Limited awareness of the existence of the technology

• High upfront costs

• Lack of access to finance

• Poorly developed supply chains – few options

• Limited institutional support

Opportunities

• Cost of solar panels has been decreasing over the past decade

• Many countries launching programmes to accelerate deployment of SIPs e.g. Bangladesh - 50,000 solar pumps by 2025; India, 100,000 by 2020; Morocco, 100,000 by 2022; Malawi, over 500 hectares of farm land are expected to benefit from solar-powered irrigation through a government programme, funded by the African Development Bank.

• Kenya government recognizes the role of irrigation development as a key drought mitigation measure in the country’s development blueprint, Vision 2030.

• The government plans to boost agricultural production in the country by placing an additional 100,000 acres under irrigation, each year up to the year 2030

Way forward

• Government intervention in making SIPs more affordable for farmers

• Building an enabling environment for the SIP value chain – Importation/Local assembly (Kenya could be a hub for East Africa), distributors, financing mechanism.

• Awareness creation

• A support system that makes it easy for distributors to reach farmers even in remote areas.

Conclusion

• Agriculture is key to Africa’s economic growth

• It is not about the farmers alone, it is about all of us coming together to ensure our country is food secure. What role are you playing