A two-day training in Nairobi on a policy monitoring methodology used by the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural policies (MAFAP) team of the Agrifood Economics Division at FAO has been held for officials working on the analysis of Kenya's public expenditure on food and agriculture, and analysis the price incentives facing producers of key agricultural commodities.

The capacity-building sessions on policy monitoring were centred around price incentives (PI) analysis, and public expenditure (PE) analysis. Both sessions included presentations on two methodologies (Volume I - Price incentives and Volume II - Analysis of public expenditure on food and agriculture) for policy monitoring, how to produce PE and PI indicators, as well as how to interpret indicator trends. There was also a presentation on how policy monitoring activities will be implemented at country level in the coming months and years.

The hybrid training days, held on 9 and 10 February 2023, were attended by 22 officials from key Kenyan institutions for each policy monitoring area and delivered by the MAFAP Kenya team – Valentina Pernechele, Thibault Meilland and Anne Chele.

For the public expenditure session, attendees included the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD), the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA), as well as other partners such as the Cereal Growers’ Association, and the Agriculture Sector Network (ASNET), and Akademiya 2063. For the price incentives training, the MAFAP team was joined by representatives from MoALD, the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA).

Speaking at the training days, Nyando V. Violet of the Cereals Growers’ Association (CGA) of Kenya said: “One of the strategic pillars of the CGA is evidence-based advocacy and effective advocacy requires facts based on analysis of existing and emerging trends and scenarios. MAFAP contributes valuable data for reference that CGA can make reference to in its advocacy endeavours. CGA is appreciative of the collaboration with the FAO MAFAP programme”.

The capacity-building sessions were just one activity under the third, 5-year phase (2022–2027) of the MAFAP programme in Kenya, which is one of eight sub-Saharan African countries to benefit from policy support for inclusive agricultural transformation.