In the past month, the government has demonstrated the real meaning of Bottom Up through the fertiliser distribution program.
Millions of farmers have been lining up at various National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) depots across the country to collect subsidized fertiliser.
While there are teething problems and some delays here and there, the certainty of getting the fertiliser overshadows them.
The deployment of technology in reaching farmers will remain one of President William Ruto's landmark Bottom Up Policy.
This mode of fertiliser distribution presents the first real disruption of the Economic Systems that had for decades strangled the economic well-being of the majority of Kenyans.
Before the introduction of the novel distribution system, most government subsidy programs ended up benefiting a few characters.
For instance, exactly 10 years ago, in March 2014, former president Uhuru announced that 143,000 Metric Tonnes of fertiliser worth Sh7.2 billion had been purchased.
These tonnes were to be distributed countrywide under the Government’s fertilizer subsidy programme.
He said the cost of a 50-kilogram bag of DAP fertiliser will retail at Sh2, 000 down from Sh2,480, NPR fertiliser at Sh2,000 down from Sh2,300, CAN at Sh1,500 instead of Sh1,600 while a 50-kilogram bag of Urea fertiliser was to be sold at Sh1, 500 instead of Sh1,800.
But immediately after the announcement and the flagging off of the fertiliser in a mega press event beamed live on TV, little was heard about the fertilizer. The prices remained the same, if not higher.
This was due to open diversion by fertiliser cartels.
When the 2014 direct subsidy failed to work, the Government partnered with a mobile Service provider in 2015.
The mobile service provider and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries embarked on the pilot of a joint initiative that aimed at empowering farmers with access to a technology-based solution for the distribution of fertiliser and other key inputs.
The solution, named ‘E-fertiliser Subsidy Management System’, was an electronic vouchering solution that was specially developed for the Ministry by the giant telco.
It allowed farmers to access vouchers via their mobile phones.
It intended to also enable the Government to plan future requirements in terms of fertiliser types and quantities
The vouchers were to be used by the farmers to access Government fertiliser at subsidized prices.
“Traditionally, the process of getting subsidies to farmers has been time intensive and inefficient as there was no single way to reach them all effectively. Our solution, should the pilot be successful, will allow us to increase transparency in the allocation of fertilizer to over 3.5 million small-holder farmers across the country using mobile phones,” Sicily Kariuki, then Principal Secretary, State Department of Agriculture said during the launch
E-Fertiliser Subsidy leveraged data and SMS services to manage the issuance, redemption and reconciliation of vouchers on behalf of the Ministry input subsidization intervention program.
The solution offered simple reporting capabilities to improve decision support for the Ministry, which was charged with distributing fertiliser inputs to farmers across the country.
But the brilliant initiative by the giant telco had one big problem, raw data was not there.
That is what the initiative led by Interior PS Dr Raymond Omollo solved.
In just one Month PS Omollo led a nationwide registration of farmers, a feat that captured 4.6 million of them.
Unlike other Government initiatives, PS Omollo started by training more than 70,000 national administration workers, from village elders, chiefs, assistants, and deputy and county commissioners on the rationale of registering farmers.
Village elders and assistant chiefs verified the actual size of land owned by each farmer before forwarding details to the chiefs and assistant county commissioners.
For the first time, a solution was found, a solution that locked out all unscrupulous dealers who took advantage of the lack of data to profit from the subsidy program.
Gordon Opiyo is the CEO of Health TV Africa. Email; [email protected].