The Kenyan government, in partnership with the CTCA, has developed a mapping tool to assess the opportunities for alternative livelihood in tobacco growing areas in Kenya.
The tool is part of the Kenyan government’s plan to develop a strategy that encourages the farming of other crops rather than tobacco.
There are different crops that are grown in Kenya. Food crops include maize, bambara nuts, cassava, sorghum, beans, ground nuts, millet, upland rice, sweet potatoes, soy bean, bananas. Cash crops include horticultural products, cotton and sugarcane and livestock includes cattle, poultry, pigs and fish.
According to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, countries that are signatories to the convention have to encourage alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers.
This includes county governments developing initiatives to promote dairy and Fish farming, an input subsidy programme that supports vulnerable households, a co-operative development fund, and an agriculture development fund (ADF).
The Ministry of Health’s mapping exercise aimed to identify all stakeholders involved in the tobacco value chain, to determine major crops grown in the tobacco growing areas and to identify alternative on-farm and off-farm preferred income generating activities to tobacco dependency.
During the assessment/mapping, participants were targeted from the Departments of Trade, Health and Agriculture. In addition to those participants wholesalers, retailers, farmers and civil Society representatives were targeted.
There were also focus group discussions where 10 farmers per county were engaged.
The Focused Group Discussions were held to identify the stakeholders involved in the whole tobacco value chain, to determine the major crops grown in the tobacco growing areas and to identify more beneficial crops that can be alternatives to tobacco growing.
As part of this farmers have been interviewed to understand which other enterprises they would engage in outside of tobacco. They were also asked that apart from tobacco farming are which cash crops are being farmed in the community you live in.
Questions were asked about the support they got from the tobacco industry and what type of support they would like from the government. The vast majority of the participants in focus group discissions were ready to shift to alternative livelihood.
The report concluded that there is need to create awareness about harmful social, environmental, economic, health effects of tobacco farming.
It also noted that the challenges anticipated by farmers for shifting to alternative livelihoods should be given attention that they deserve.
The next step is for economic analysis of alternative enterprises to be done to guide farmers when choosing alternative enterprises and to have a programme that will coordinate partners that are offering alternative livelihoods so as to create some synergy.