Kenya and FAO collaborate in reducing malnutrition, improving food security and enhancing youth employment
Investing in youth employment through aquaculture
19 November 2014, Kisumu, Kenya --The Government of Kenya and the Food and Agriculture Organization have launched a three year project today that aims to promote greater diversity in agricultural production and activities to improve nutrition and to offer better job prospects to young people in Kenya. The launch was held in Kisumu City, Kenya, led by the Permanent Secretary of Fisheries in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Professor Micheni J. Ntiba and the Assistant FAO Representative in Kenya, Mr. Robert Allport.
The launch was for the Kenya component of the regional project titled ‘Promoting Nutrition Sensitive Agricultural Diversification to Fight malnutrition and Enhance Youth employment Opportunities in Eastern Africa’. With financial support from the FAO managed Africa Solidarity Trust Fund, the project is set to benefit four countries in Eastern Africa, namely Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda.
The Kenya component of the regional project will receive support of USD 1,060,000 over a period of three years. ‘The aim of the project is to improve nutrition and food security through the creation decent employment opportunities for young men and women in the aquaculture sector’, explained Mr. Allport.
‘This will increase the availability of good quality fish fingerlings and feeds and thereby increase the overall production capacity of local aquaculture value chains’, he added.
The regional project is one of four sub-regional projects that were signed in the margin of the Malabo AU Summit, last July 2014, and funded by the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund worth a total investment of USD 16 million. 24 countries in West, Central, East, and Southern Africa will benefit from it with a focus on youth employment and malnutrition, transboundary animal diseases, food safety and urban food security.
Young people under the age of 24 represent more than 60 percent of Africa’s population and over 70 percent of them live on less than USD 2 per day. The 28th Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa (Tunis, March 2014) took the engagement of generating attractive and decent jobs for the youth in the rural agricultural settings; the project aims to significantly contribute to increased food security, improved nutrition and livelihood resilience that ultimately reduced rural poverty in Kenya.
FAO in Kenya has prioritised youth empowerment in agriculture in its strategic objectives as outlined in the FAO Country Programming Framework for Kenya 2014 -2017. Through this project, the youth will be engaged in the aqua-business value chain setting up well trained youth led out-grower groups and assisting small scale producers to sustainably increase their production and constitute these groups into commercial organisations that have better access to markets through cooperatives, producer and trade associations.
Additional information is available online at the following links:
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/237145/icode/ (Malabo AU Summit)
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/237300/icode/- (ARC Tunis)
http://www.fao.org/resources/infographics/infographics-details/en/c/236999/
http://www.fao.org/africa/news/detail-news/en/c/266571/ (ASTF funded Rwanda project)
About the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund (ASTF): The ASTF was endorsed at the 27th FAO Regional Conference for Africa held in April 2012 in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, and officially launched during the 38th Session of the FAO Conference in June 2013. It was established for and by African governments and partners. Its goal is to pool resources from Africa’s strongest economies and use them across the continent to implement national and regional food security initiatives within the framework of the African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
Contact:
Judith Mulinge
Communication, FAO in Kenya
Email: [email protected]| Mob: +254 721 574971