KEPSA led by the Deputy CEO, Mr. Victor Ogalo, participated and made a presentation at the Annual Conference hosted by the Association of Consulting Engineers of Kenya under the theme “Engineering Food Security in Kenya”, from 16^th to 17^th October 2023 in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County. KEPSA’s presence was further bolstered by the participation of its Board Director, Eng. James Mwangi, in his capacity as the Vice-President of the FIDIC (International Federation of Consulting Engineers). Deliberations at the Conference focused on how to harness engineering’s transformative potential to innovate and engineer a future of a food-secure Kenya for all. The Conference was officially opened by Uasin Gishu Governor H.E. Bii Chelilim.

KEPSA’s presentation highlighted some of the key factors contributing to severe food insecurity in Kenya that would lead to engineering solutions in dealing with climate change shocks, poor and inadequate agricultural infrastructure, high cost of agricultural inputs, use of outdated agricultural technologies, inadequate market access, inadequate funding, low-quality seeds, inadequate agricultural research and development, inadequate agricultural extension services among others. The presentation further pointed to the dilemma observed on food insecurity in some regions, where food insecurity was not occasioned by poor agricultural production but rather the weak distribution channels from regions of glut to regions of deprivation.

Mr. Ogalo called for increased investments in the agriculture sector as it was a sure bet to get returns since access to food was a permanent need for humans that would never be disrupted. “We will always need to eat and we must always produce the food. Yet, we seem to have abrogated this role to other countries to feed us. Our food import bill has been rising from KES 82Bn in 2016 to KES 183Bn in 2022. In the last three years alone between 2020 and 2023, we have incurred close to KES 500Bn in food imports”. This was noted to reflect a lost investment opportunity for Kenya and a depletion of Kenya’s foreign exchange and amounted to sustaining jobs in the supplier countries.

Mr. Ogalo further highlighted that increased focus was needed to soar up production of maize, rice, potatoes, meat, milk, fish and pulses as these were the key to food security in Kenya. He noted, particularly, the widening production gap in the maize sector where there’s been an observed decline from 42.1 million bags in 2020 to 36.7 million bags in 2021 and a further drop to 34.3 million bags in 2022. While these shortfalls have had to be imported to plug the gap, they amounted to lost investment and livelihood opportunities.

Some of the solutions that were proposed by Mr. Ogalo included the need to de-risk agriculture to help mobilize private sector financing to the sector and blended finance in countries that are most affected by acute food insecurity such as Kenya. Public Private Partnerships should also be welcome in financing major agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation infrastructure and storage facilities to reduce reliance on the rain–fed agriculture. Further, there is a need to improve the marketing infrastructure for moving food from surplus to deficit regions to provide farmers with market-based pricing. Value addition and agro-processing were also emphasized to help create new livelihood opportunities, particularly developing a robust leather sub-sector. To avert post–harvest losses of perishable crops and livestock products, the private sector is key in increasing value addition and improving shelf life as well as deploying technologies that would help track and resolve losses at various stages.