By Jenny Luesby

Kenyan farmers have gained almost zero value in farming information from over Sh25bn of donor funds delivered to create Kalro’s Kenya Agricultural Observatory Platform, KAOP, and related digitalisation.

After seven years of operation and having received many millions of shillings. KAOP offers three types of information.

The first is local weather, offering the same 14 days ahead that is available automatically on Google with a place-name search and the word ‘weather’

The KAOP weather service is the result of a heavily-funded partnership between Kalro and the Kenya Meteorological Department. However, it has not managed to match Google’s weather service, which uses global weather agency data, satellite data, ground observations, and AI-driven models to generate 14-day local forecasts in every location in Kenya.

The second leg of KAOP is described as ‘localised’ agronomic advice based on the precise weather, but is generic and substantially without any farming value, despite asking farmers to submit a location and crop. 

For Mukuyuni, Bungoma, for example, the agronomic advice for farmers growing maize, shown in part in the photo, tells farmers to plant at least 10 metres from the road, add (unspecified) fertiliser and manure, use certified seeds and practice conservation agriculture – with almost no indication of what that is. 

It’s only actual piece of farming information is the correct crop spacing.

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No element of this is local, or weather related. Yet its producer, a partner digital project, AICCRA that has also received millions in funding, has described it as local, climate-matched advisory.

Instead, it has been an expensive route to informing farmers on the correct spacing for 37 crops, which could have been listed on a single page.

The final leg on KAOP is market data, which is food prices in local markets. Many have ‘no information’, while those with data, from another heavily funded project, KAZNET, offer long-past prices.

On 20th July 2025, for instance, the market data for Kamukuywa market states that the price of sukuma wiki was Sh40 per kilo – on 7th November 2023.

The project has been unable to create any regular collection of prices with its funding, and has not explained how the price of Tilipia, onions and tomatoes a year ago or potatoes and mangoes two years ago, is helping farmers.

The reality is that agricultural prices can vary, or move permanently, by more than 60 per cent in a single year, making two-year old prices meaningless for farmers.

However, across all three legs of KOAP, the information is dislocated from farmers’ needs and the decisions and actions that can make a difference as great as 500% in their incomes. 

Even information that would be possible is omitted. It is long-range weather forecasts that are most critical in crop choices, saving farmers from complete crop loss, for example, of maize in a drought year, or allowing farmers to time planting and plan maturity against a period of rain ahead. Yet these are not there, despite being issued, usually, only twice a year, and, usually, regionally.

Likewise, telling farmers to practice conservation agriculture requires a farmer to go and get information on what that actually need to do from whatever source they could have used in the first place. There is no practical farmer support in replacing advisory with a subject heading.

Yet, despite nearly a decade of work, mopping up enough funds to give every single farmer in Kenya cash of Sh5,500 or half a million farmers a free grant of Sh50,000 to improve their farming, this is the sum of the country’s Sh25bn of digital stimulation for its foundation economic sector.

KAOP, AICCRA and KAZNET have been funded by the World Bank, with additional funding for KAOP from CGIAR.

For Kenyan farmers, the only hope is that any further funding might consider which information farmers need for what decisions, and set itself the rigour of supplying that.
See: www.kaop.co.ke for the information available for the first Sh25bn.