Future plans: Scaling out the KACE MILS PDF Print E-mail

{mosimage}Based on the above developments and lessons, KACE is seeking resources to scale-out its developed and tested MILS strategy for empowering farmers and other SMEs to access input and output markets more effectively,

profitably and sustainably through exploiting the power of ICTs. The strategy we have developed takes the view that uptake, adoption and adaption of new agricultural technologies will only meaningfully occur when there are efficiently functioning and equitable markets.  However, as noted above, market information is a necessary but not sufficient condition, and public sector market information systems are often not financially sustainable.  On the other hand, there are no knowledgeable local entrepreneurs and with capacity to scale out the KACE MILS private sector delivered services. Our future strategy therefore involves five objectives:

  1. Scaling-out the Soko Hewani for trading commodities through rural FM Radio based program.
  2. Scaling-out franchised market resource centers, which will provide market information and market linkages through physical trading floors and Soko Hewani, and also provide e-services.
  3. Scaling-up and automation of the KACE MILS market information collection, processing, management and dissemination.
  4. Building the capacity of farmers and SMEs to utilize information from MILS effectively.
  5. Monitoring and evaluation of project activities.
Our vision of success is of farmers well linked to agribusinesses, with significantly increased incomes through effective and profitable participation in agricultural input and output markets with the help of modern ICTs. By aiming to increase the incomes of farmers and other rural SMEs, these objectives contribute directly to the Kenya Government’s Strategy for the Revitalization of Agriculture (SRA), and also to the Millennium Development Goal No. 1 of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by half by the year 2015 (50% reduction in number of people living on less than a dollar a day).