By Marsabit Governor’s press
To empower farmers to adopt modern farming technology, the Marsabit County Government in collaboration with the World Bank has offered Ksh 51 million grants to locals to boost their livelihoods.
The project is geared towards increasing agricultural productivity and building resilience to climate change risks in the targeted smallholder and pastoral farming in the county.
The project is implemented in six wards from the four sub-counties where the participatory selection process was done by the county technical advisory committee and approval done by the county project steering committee.
Guided by project appraisal document and county climate risk profiles, value chain commodities of meat goat, Kales, Teff and fish were prioritized and adopted by stakeholders in all the six wards.
A total of 155 groups with 574 micro-project received 51.9M in the first phase of disbursement. Each group will receive between, 350,000 to 1,000,000 to implement their climate-smart projects.
Speaking during the launch, farmers from different wards said climate change has rampantly affected their activities making it unsustainable.
They lauded the initiative saying it is God sent and will transform their livelihoods.
Governor Mohamud Ali lauded the initiative saying it will transform the vast county economically considering part of it is continuously affected by diverse climatic change.
While promising to give more focus to agriculture in budget allocation so that the county can become self-sufficient, the governor thanked the multi-agency team that has been fighting desert locust invasion in the county. He revealed that 28 airplanes are in various areas of the county to tackle the locusts.
He challenged the beneficiaries not to derail from their initial intended purpose for the feasibility of the project.
He was accompanied by the deputy governor Solomon Gubo Riwe, Senator Godana Hargura, CECMs, COs and host of Members of the County Assembly led by the leader of Majority Halkano Konso.
