Active Citizen Participation to Strengthen Public Participation by Small Scale Farmers in Taita Taveta County

The project aimed to strengthen community participation in county budget-making processes to improve service delivery under devolution. Funded by the Society for International Development (SID), it ran from November 2014 to August 2015 across 12 wards (three per sub-county), scaling up the County Farmers Network — known as the Sauti ya Mkulima ('Voice of the Farmer') platform — to empower farmers to participate in county-level decision-making.

The project constituted a County Core Group through representatives chosen at Ward Dialogue fora. The Sauti ya Mkulima platform gained recognition as a structure for farmer engagement in county planning: network representatives secured meetings with 3 MCAs and 1 MP, and local chiefs and their assistants began inviting representatives to address Village Barazas. Lobbying and advocacy training for three value-chain platforms under the ASDSP framework sharpened value-chain actors' skills in the dairy, banana, and indigenous chicken sectors to advocate for greater resource allocation in agriculture and livestock.