Uasin Gishu Deputy Governor Eng John Barorot has affirmed the County’s willingness and readiness to partner with various stakeholders to see county-established Cooperative Societies spur economically.
The DG said registered co-ops get a mechanism to have a populist with people who are ready to come together for economic empowerment.
He was speaking on Friday while hosting a delegation of 17 staff from the Somalia Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives leaders.
The team led by Ahmed Keinan are in the County to pick best practices on co-op movements and the successes that the Kenya grain farming co-ops have attained to help them improve on efficiency as well as post-harvest management.
Eng Barorot also thanked the delegation for choosing to benchmark with Uasin Gishu Co-ops saying that their culture (Somali) instils a lot of trust and loyalty calling on them to use it to enrich their people.
“We are putting up infrastructure at our upcoming County Aggregation and Industrial Park(CAIP) which will focus on the output from the farming where co-ops will do value addition and the government will link them to markets,” noted the DG.
Diversification and multi-value chain mechanisms
County Executive Committee Member for Trade and Cooperatives Martha Cheruto said already some of the Cooperatives have already begun realizing the importance of factoring in diversification and multi-value chain mechanisms.
“One of the roles that we do is carrying out capacity building for these entities to learn as well as exposing them to international markets,” added Cheruto.
Regional Manager for East Africa Grain Council (EAGC) Jacinta Mwau said “Uasin Gishu is the country’s key producer of grains and the delegation saw it necessary to come and learn from the co-ops and other neighbouring counties.”
The delegation from Somalia later proceeded to Tuiyo FCS to benchmark their management and how the support from the county department of co-ops has helped them improve their grain production and their diversification aspects to among others dairy farming.
EAGC has been in the county for the last week conducting training to various farmer coops on grain quality management as an initiative for post-harvest management.
County Secretary Edwin Bett, Chief of Staff Nicholas Chepkwony, Cooperatives Chief Officer Ruth Samoei, Director Enterprise Isaac Lagat, Co-operative Commissioner Roselyne Rae, and a delegation from Kenya and Somalia Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) were also present.
