USAid helps dairy sector boost quality, safety for export and economic growth

The USAid has partnered with BioFood Products Limited to launch the 'Safe Milk Kenya' project.

This project represents a step towards ensuring the safety and quality of dairy products, thus bolstering the industry's overall impact in Kenya.

The campaign came up due to the continuing prevalence of dangerous mycotoxins, the most common being aflatoxin in food and dairy.

USAid Kenya and East Africa project management specialist Robert Kilonzo spoke to the Star on the significance of this undertaking. 

You have partnered with Bio Foods Limited Kenya for the Safe Milk Initiative. Why this project?

I am a food safety specialist, and how we work at USAid is we have two major programmes, which focus on bilateral and regional efforts. The bilateral effort is about Kenya, while the other one looks at the regional blocs.

What we do in Kenya is that we try as much as possible to work with the private sector, civil society and the public sector, which is the government. The only goal for us is to ensure that Kenyans get a prosperous life.

For the Safe Milk Initiative, this is an activity under the African Trade and Investments programme, whereby we are looking at the enterprises that can deliver the development objectives we are looking at. The reason why we have partnered with Bio Foods Limited, Kenya Dairy Board and the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock is to ensure every Kenyan has access to safe and quality milk.

What do you aim to achieve from this project?

First, we partner with the private sector because they have the resources, are enterprise-driven and are the biggest driver of employment, creating 9 out of 10 jobs. Job creation is a key area of focus for us.

In as much as businesses push for profits, they also contribute significantly in uplifting livelihoods among Kenyans.

On the other hand, when it comes to farmers, we are keen on the numbers we are able to transition from farm gate/milk hawking to onboarding into the formal dairy sector, where they are not only able to achieve quality in their milk but also sell their milk, earning them some good income.

Why does the safety and quality of dairy products matter?

A significant percentage of finances on a dairy farm is often used for the purpose of treating sick cattle. This results in discarding of milk contaminated with drugs, causing losses. This programme is about putting in early preventative mechanisms in the farm process to ensure that resources are allocated efficiently to development programmes that enable the dairy farm to increase productivity.

USAid's programme focus is the farmer as the key beneficiary. We intend for them to increase production volumes, which translates into profitability and quality when done the right way. We chose the dairy industry as a partner to ensure that we get grassroots impact by ensuring the farmer gets it right. Investing in the farm is part of the foundation for improving agricultural practices, thus farmers need to understand why it is necessary to improve their dairy agricultural practices.

We look at the dairy sector from a macro perspective, in terms of income, jobs, food security and safety for Kenyans. We work with the private sector to build awareness on why quality is necessary for increasing our people’s health and they in turn increase demand to the farmers for safe milk, which goes a long way towards building the sector.

How long is this project running?

The Safe Milk Initiative is an activity under the African Trade and Investments programme, which is continental here in Kenya and running all the way to 2026.

We do expect that by that time, the partners we are working together with will be able to have achieved all the milestones which we agreed on. By extension, we say by then there are a number of jobs that we want to see, a number of farmers on board. We also want to see the income at the farmer level increase. That is where exactly we want to be in 2026.

At the end of this project, what skills and knowledge will you want to see Kenyan farmers having?

The farmer will be having an enterprise thinking, business wise. What I mean by this is a situation where I know I have to do it right to be able to sustain the market I have. We do anticipate that Bio Food Products Limited will be able to onboard the farmer into what they call ‘Farming the bio way’, which focuses on feeding for profit to ensure that the dairy farms are run as businesses.

It has a lot of capacity building in it, and that is what the milestones talk about. Already, behaviour change will be instilled into the farmer and they will have known what they need to do to sustain their constant supply of milk and income and by extension, are able to feed their cattle with healthy inputs to ensure safe milk is produced for the end consumer.

What informed the decision to pick Kenya for the Safe Milk Initiative Project?

The African Trade and Investments as I said is a continental programme with USAid. How we work is, we do inform widely that we have opened the window for request for proposals on any development challenges faced. This is done by USAid to support national objectives that have been earmarked by the government as the key focus for a period of time.

This partnership is as a result of bilateral agreements made, with Kenya being a focal point due to the structural nature of its agricultural sector. After receiving proposals, we honed down on milk safety being a key part of supporting the national agenda of agricultural growth as a key pillar.

After a rigorous review, we identified milk contamination, specifically aflatoxin, antibiotics and harmful bacteria, as a focus to be tackled. This is an enterprise-driven solution in partnership with private sector and government to collectively tackle an ecosystem issue.

Do you have a similar project in any other African country?

There are other projects in different countries and they have their own models of development partnerships.

Do you have other projects touching on dairy products in Kenya?

Other programmes will touch on the farmers as well. They may not be squarely on this because this is project for the dairy only. We will have other projects that are touching on farmers but not really associated with this.

USAid has cross-cutting programmes, especially in agriculture, and in one way, there is an increasing need for value-chain support for farmers across the board.

How will this project help Kenyan milk competitiveness at the world market?

Under this programme and the broader continental programme, we are interested in seeing how to increase our exports. For you to do any export, you must meet the requirement of the importing country. Kenya being part of the bigger globe with respect to international standards, we do believe that if you get safe and quality milk, for example, like Bio Milk, across to the other countries, it will be able to meet the requirements and standards of any receiving country across the world.

Core to export is quality and safety; until these parameters are met, it is impossible. We chose BioFoods as a benchmarking partner as prior to this, they had met the global and export parameters. We wanted them to expand this knowledge to the farmers to upscale volumes being produced that are export-aligned.

How does keeping Kenyan milk safe help the country grow and advance economically?

In terms of the economic advancement of any nation, the poverty line is one of the markers you want to get concerned with. In this initiative by USAid in partnership with BioFoods, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock and the Kenya Dairy Board, the main stakeholder here is the farmer. By empowering the farmer’s profitability, they are able to enhance their production quality to ensure they meet the requirements of both the internal Kenyan and external international market.

Quality in food was brought to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it became clear that building immunity through clean food was necessary to prevent diseases that ravaged families physically and economically.

We now know today that aflatoxin exposure, antibiotic resistance and contaminated food are drivers of disease. Diseases have an economic impact and by being pro-active within the food value chain, we can preventively mitigate this from the onset, and this money can be used in facilitating development within our homes.

Do not forget that aflatoxin is a silent killer and will kill you slowly if you continue taking it or in acute small quantities.

What are the future plans for the milk safety campaign?

The reason why you see the private sector at the centre goes to the fundamental principles; it's them who have the ultimate responsibility. We are partnering with them to make the changes that benefit you as the final consumer.

We are now seeing growth as the Kenyan dairy sector becomes competitive, with increased acceptability in international markets. By BioFoods supporting this programme in partnership with USAid and the Kenyan government, bringing in the bio way of farming into the perspective of the farmer, we are seeing transformation of the dairy sector and a better Kenya.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or expansions planned?

In USAid, we structure our programmes using a layered approach between new and existing efforts. From time to time, we do take a pause to monitor and evaluate our efforts to ensure we are gaining insights for better outcomes.

We compare this to the milestones we set before and track our achievements against them to ensure that projects such as Safe Milk have continuity. The project then continues evolving with key learnings and added project partners and farmer groups embedded to ensure project growth; for example, the Bamsco Union co-operatives that were onboarded as a result of the Safe Milk project gains.

We continue to identify areas of growth as outlined in the national agricultural agenda in support of the whole value chain and improve on others.