VC Platform 5th General Meeting in Tharaka Nithi
Monday, 26 August 2024 by Lazarus Munyua
Macadamia Value Chain Platform in Tharaka Nithi County was formed way back in 2022. The platform since then has been championing for the development of the macadamia value chain in Tharaka Nithi County. The composition of the platform includes actors from across all nodes of the value chain with the sole focus on creating synergies to streamlining operations along the value chain. The coming together of all these actors in the chain ensures a win - win situation among actors in their own engagements.
The platform holds two (2) scheduled meetings every year with a possibility of convening any other unscheduled meeting as need may arise. This year the fifth meeting (5th VCP meeting) was held on 30th July 2024 at Lowlands hotel in Chuka. The meeting was well attended with a total of 48 participants (36 Male, 12 Female).
The meeting reviewed the action plan activities that were to be achieved between January and June, 2024 as was agreed in the 4th VCP meeting. Some of notable achievements reported include; ToT trainings for the field officers and lead farmers were done by one of the partner processors (Batian nuts), farmer inspection and registration is ongoing with the county, marketing clusters have been formed by SHEPBiz, county government and VCP officials ( 14 clusters, maara- 4, Muthambi-5, Chuka- 5), on VCP registration status, members were informed that the draft constitution was ready and what was remaining was to forward registration documents to the registrar of the social services.
Further, the meeting planned together for the activities that will be to be done between July and December, 2024. All activities planned were drawn from the action plan developed by the platform after the value chain analysis.
As a Way forward, the platform agreed that they officials will lobby through the department of agriculture to the county government to consider Macadamia crop into their subsidy program. Clusters were also encouraged to continuously engage with the off takers (processors) they are currently working with solidify their engagement.
BDS Training for Macadamia Value Chain Actors
Thursday, 13 June 2024 by Munyua
Business Development Services (BDS) Training for Macadamia Value Chain Actors (Tharaka Nithi County)- 28 to 30 May, 2024 at Lowlands Hotel-Chuka
Small Smallholder Empowerment and Agribusiness promotion (SHEP Biz) project is supporting and promoting Macadamia nut value chain in Tharaka Nithi County. At the start of the project, Macadamia value chain analysis was done to strengths and weaknesses along the Macadamia value chain in the county. After the analysis, Macadamia action plan was developed highlighting key challenges identified and possible interventions to address such bottlenecks. Low entrepreneurial skills, low productivity, low quality macadamia nuts and disorganized marketing of Macadamia nuts emerged as the key challenges faced by value chain actors. This therefore informed the project to organize a three-day training covering orchard management, integrated pest and disease management, climate smart agriculture, and post-harvest harvesting and marketing. Other topics covered included; Macadamia production planning, entrepreneurship and business ethics, group dynamics and leadership and leadership skills. In the last day, there was a session between Macadamia nut processors and Macadamia producer clusters to share lessons learnt from clustering model and to both plan for upcoming engagements between them.
The training objectives included; To enhance Macadamia nut production skill, to up entrepreneurial skills of Macadamia value chain actors, to improve leadership skills of group leaders in Macadamia value chain, to enhance financial management skills of the Macadamia value chain actors, to understand market environment for Macadamia value chain and to provide platform to create linkages between Macadamia nut producer clusters and processors.
A total of 44 (31 male, 13 female) value chain actors and county agribusiness officers were trained on production skills and business development services (entrepreneurship). Trainers were drawn from Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (SHEP Biz), Kenya Institute of Business Training (KIBT) and Afrimac Limited.
4th General Meeting of VC Platform (Tharaka Nithi)
Friday, 15 March 2024 by Tharaka Nithi county
The value chain (VC) platform for macadamia nut was established in Tharaka Nithi in 2022. The general meeting has been held every 6 months where all value chain actors related to macadamia nut VC join and discuss challenges and necessary actions for developing better macadamia nut VC in Tharaka Nithi.
Participants in the 4th meeting held on January 31st were Tharaka Nithi county officers and other VC stakeholders, e.g., processors (Village nuts, Jumbo nuts, TenSesnes, Sagana nuts, Tropical Mac, Batian Nuts), aggregators, input suppliers, Government institutions (Agricultural Technology Development Centre (ATDC) Siakago).
The consumption of macadamia nuts in Kenya is very limited. As most of them are exported, produce is required to meet international market demand and fulfill international quality standards. Quality of macadamia nuts produced in Kenya, however, has still room to be improved, which is one of the problems exporters have faced. The general meeting of value chain platform is a place where value chain actors discuss such issues and plan how to tackle them.
The processors (exporters), which understand demands of international market, producers, county government officers, and other actors participated in the 4th general meeting and discussed countermeasures to such challenges. As a result of discussions, the value chain platform members agreed to continue production technique dissemination to producers by collaboration between exporters and county government.
