Italian Development Cooperation is supporting women and young people in Kenya and South Sudan’s most marginalised regions. They will be the beneficiaries of the new development project worth 1.5 million euros as part of an agreement signed in Rome by the Director General for Development Cooperation, Giampaolo Cantini, and his colleague from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Jose’ Graziano da Silva. Also present at the signing were the Kenyan Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Felix Kiptarus Koskei, and his South Sudanese counterpart, Betty Achan Ogwaro.
Support for farms and cooperatives run by women and young people
The project will support smallholdings and cooperatives run by women and young people and help them obtain access to markets and to market and sell their agricultural produce. In Kenya, the project will be implemented mainly through the Wei Wei bilateral cooperation project in Sigor. The project is working on expanding the irrigation canal network to benefit thousands of farmers, and on sustainable access to markets. Italian Development Cooperation has been active in Sigor since 1985, in projects that have built 18 kilometres of canals, 13 bridges, and a dam with capacity of 200 litres of water per second. As a result, 800 hectares of arid land have been transformed into fertile fields.
