Market Assessment

Crop conditions are favourable across the country for maize, wheat, rice and beans due to rains received in April. Kitui reported exceptional crop performance for all crops. Weeding and topdressing were the main activities with counties in North rift reporting planting as rains were received in April • Wheat is in early vegetative stages in Narok and Nakuru while in north rift it is expected to begin in May/ June. General crop performance is good due to the adequate rains received in most areas. Leaching reported in low lying areas in Meru and FAW in Baringo putting the counties under...

Food insecurity is a major development challenge in developing countries. In Kenya, the food poverty incidence remains high, as about 1 in every 3 individuals does not meet the minimum daily calorific requirement. Research points to possible gender-linked pathways through which agriculture influences food security in households. Gender considerations are especially important in the African context where there are broad divisions in the responsibilities between men and women and how they use their personal income in line with traditional cultures. To evaluate this pathway in the Kenyan context, we explore how women’s empowerment in agriculture compares to that of men,...

Achieving food and nutritional security by all people at all times is a key development goal at the global, regional and national levels. Gender mainstreaming in food and nutritional policies, programmes and projects is increasingly being recognized as important to the realization of SDG 21 . In addition, access to wellfunctioning markets is likely to improve farmers profitability and their access to diverse nutritious foods. This paper avails the evidence of gendered access to organized agricultural markets on household dietary diversity scores in Kenya using nationwide survey data. Using an inverse probability weighted treatment-effect estimator, we evaluate whether improving women’s...

African agricultural markets are characterized by low farmer revenues and high consumer food prices. Many have worried that this wedge is partially driven by imperfect competition among intermediaries. This paper provides experimental evidence from Kenya on intermediary market structure. Randomized cost shocks and demand subsidies are used to identify a structural model of market competition. Estimates reveal that traders act consistently with joint profit maximization and earn median markups of 39 percent. Exogenously induced firm entry has negligible effects on prices, and low take-up of subsidized entry offers implies large fixed costs. We estimate that traders...

The Kenyan economy rebounded in 2018 and economic activity in the first quarter of 2019 was healthy, although emerging drought conditions could curtail GDP growth for the remainder of the year. The economy expanded by 6.0 percent in the first three quarters of 2018 compared to 4.7 percent during the same period in 2017 driven by strong private consumption in part due to improved income from agricultural harvests in 2018, remittance inflows, and lower food prices. The Bank's GDP growth estimate for 2018 is about 5.8 percent. A strong pick-up in economic activity in Q1...