NAIROBI, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Kenya and the World Bank on Monday launched a 1.5 billion shilling (about 15 million U.S. dollars) coffee revitalization program to increase production in the country.
Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives Peter Munya said the program will also improve the efficiency of farmer cooperative societies and support the development of alternative coffee markets.
"We intend to support research development and technology dissemination," Munya told journalists in Nairobi.
Phase one of the program will start in central and eastern Kenya, regions that produce about 70 percent of coffee in the country, he said.
The second phase of the program will be launched to cover other remaining regions to upscale lessons learned from phase one.
The program will focus on enhancing cash flow, fertilizer subsidy and propagation of seeds, improved primary processing infrastructure, and better quality of coffee.
He added that the program is also intended to strengthen cooperative institutions and support the integration of database and monitoring of operations.
"The program will contribute and synergize with other interventions that the government is undertaking to revitalize the coffee industry such as review of legislation and establishment of the coffee cherry advance revolving fund," Munya said.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the coffee sub-sector continues to be an integral part of the national economic growth agenda, he said.
The government has embarked on the promotion of domestic coffee consumption to provide farmers alternative markets besides the international one, Munya said.
Hamadi Boga, principal secretary for the agriculture, said the coffee sub-sector, once a steady and reliable source of income of livelihoods for millions of Kenyans, has been facing many challenges.
"The challenges are manifested in the decline of coffee production from 130,000 metric tons of clean coffee to an average of 40 metric tons," he said.
Kenya's coffee is grown by an estimated 700,000 stallholder farmers and 3,000 coffee estates are involved in the production and support 5 million people. Enditem
