Enterprise

Nestlé targets women coffee farmers with Sh40m training

coffee

A coffee farmer in Nyeri. A woman picks coffee berries in Nyeri County this week. The Nestle programme will train 41,000 farmers. PHOTO | FILE

Global food company Nestlé is training women and youth in an agribusiness programme that will run for three years.

It is partnering with Coffee Management Services Ltd, a farm management services provider, to see more women and youth take up a leading role in co-operative management and also embrace agriculture.

The training is part of Nestlé’s global Nescafé Plan which aims at offering agricultural training to approximately 41,000 coffee farmers across Central and Eastern Kenya.

“We are planning to spend about Sh40 million between 2015 and 2017 to help boost coffee production in the country,” Ciru Miring’u, the Nestlé East Africa’s managing director said in a statement.

“A significant amount of this money will be spent on the women and youth empowerment programme.”

Confidence building

The first phase of the project which took place between 2011 and 2014 benefited about 10,000 women coffee farmers. The second phase started yesterday when Nestle Kenya trained women and youths from Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Kiambu, Embu and Meru counties.

Lessons cover good agricultural practices, governance, confidence building, financial literacy, food security, family nutrition and life skills, which included a session on HIV/Aids.

Nescafé Plan is a global initiative to create value across the coffee supply chain, from farmers to consumers, whose core aim is building capacity and improving productivity, quality of coffee and help coffee farmers obtain higher incomes.

The initiative, is part of Nestlé’s Creating Shared Value principle, which believes in empowering communities for business to prosper. Farmers are provided with nurseries and training on good agricultural practices and disease-resistant crop.

Big boost

“The impact of the gender and youth training programme coupled with the fact that over 9,000 farmers have adopted the high yielding and disease resistant Batian variety will be a big boost to sustaining increased coffee production,” said Kamau Kuria, managing director for Coffee Management Services Limited.

The company, an implementation partner for the Nestlé’s Nescafé Plan, will oversee the gender and youth training including monitoring progress.