Voices from the field: enhancing potato and cassava value chains performance

The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), Egerton University and Gulu University in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation are implementing the “Transforming African Agricultural Universities to meaningfully contribute to Africa’s growth and development (TAGDev) Project”. The overall objective of the project is to transform African agricultural universities and their graduates to better respond to developmental challenges through enhanced application of science, technology, business and innovation for rural agricultural transformation. Through TAGDev, several African universities are having an opportunity to increase their engagement with the communities and youth through the Community Action Research Programmes (CARPs). The CARPs provide opportunity to universities to undertake research whilst sharing and jointly generating knowledge with the communities, co-designing development interventions, and co-implementing community-based development processes and actions. This publication shares lessons, practices and evidence of how Egerton University has been engaged in two key agricultural commodity value chains in Kenya; the potato value chain and cassava value chain. It highlights the effort taken by university research teams in facilitating quality seed potato production and increasing its uptake among smallholder farmers. This publication also points out the processes and engagements undertaken in catalysing cassava seed bulking and increasing farmer skills within Nakuru County.