A Proposal for a Digital Agricultural Platform to Improve Kenyan Smallholder Livelihoods, Using Fresh Markets to Plug the Infrastructure Gap
Imperial College London
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Abstract: Kenyan smallholder agriculture, despite employing some 60% of the country’s working population and generating over 30% of GDP, is beset by difficulties that lock much of rural Kenya into poverty. Volatile market information, inadequate infrastructure and poor access to agricultural markets constitute some of the major market failures which precipitate poor smallholder market participation, barely liveable incomes, dismal productivity, and acute vulnerability to climate shocks. Aiming to leverage the spread of digital technology across Kenya, efforts to resolve these problems are increasingly focussed on digital solutions. Of these, Digital Agricultural Platforms (DAPs) attract particular interest for their potential to benefit smallholders by offering services to help them overcome market participation barriers and improve their livelihoods. However, inadequate rural infrastructure limits their effectiveness and remains an unsolved barrier to greater smallholdermarket participation. Informing the design with systematic literature review (SLR) and case study of Kenya’s foremost DAP, this thesis aims to demonstrate that that a new digital agricultural platform could benefit Kenyan smallholders and other stakeholders by leveraging Kenyan fresh markets to plug the infrastructure gap, with the aim of developing more profitable, sustainable, and resilient food supply chains.